Tears, unity, and prayer echo in the Arab hovel where abducted soldier Nachshon Wachsman Hy”d was killed nearly three decades ago

Photos: Elchanan Kotler, Flash 90

IT was Friday, 9 Cheshvan (October 14) 1994, as the nation held its collective breath, unified in prayer for a miracle  — or at least a daring IDF rescue — after 19-year-old Golani soldier Nachshon Wachsman Hy”d was abducted and held for nearly a week at gunpoint by his Hamas terrorist captors. The deadline for his execution — eight p.m. Friday night — was approaching. Would Israel capitulate to Hamas’s demand for the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and another 200 terrorists from Israeli prisons in exchange for Nachshon’s life?

Yehudah Wachsman a”h, Nachshon’s father, begged the nation to daven — in fact, over 100,000 people of all religious stripes and types converged on the Kosel to pray for his safety. His mother, Esther, pleaded with women in Israel and around the world to light an extra Shabbos candle. In the end, as we know, Nachshon was killed by his captors during a brave but failed rescue attempt by IDF commandos. And, as his rosh yeshivah famously said at the funeral, “Hashem hears every prayer, but just as a father always wants to say ‘yes’ to his children’s requests, sometimes he must say ‘no,’ even if the child doesn’t understand why. Hashem heard our prayers, and for some reason that we don’t understand, this time He said ‘no.’”

Today, with the approaching yahrtzeit, we’re heading to the village of Bir-Nabala, back to the still-abandoned house where Wachsman was held and eventually murdered, where officer Nir Poraz was killed and seven other soldiers wounded during the rescue attempt. The village is just a few minutes outside of Jerusalem, but we have a military escort as it’s over the fence in Area C, and these days, especially with Israeli-Arab tensions taut and security forces on high alert, it might as well be a different universe.

We’re joined by Major Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, who at the time was commander of Army Intelligence’s elite Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit, the rescue force that charged in on the captors 28 years ago. We’ve also asked Chezi Wachsman, Nachshon’s brother, to join us — he’s never been back to the captivity house before, nor has he ever seen the couch where his brother was held, and eventually murdered. Chezi doesn’t come alone, though. He brings along a close friend and fellow bereaved brother named Itamar Moreno.

Itamar is the brother of Lieutenant Colonel Emmanuel Moreno, a”h, who fell at the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006 while in General Alon’s brigade. Moreno, a religious soldier who’d served in mostly undisclosed capacities within Sayeret Matkal for 15 years, had taken part in the greatest number of operations in the unit’s history, and was considered the single most prized soldier in the entire IDF. He left behind a wife and three children.

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In fact, the operations Moreno was involved in were so secretive and sophisticated that until today, 16 years after his death, the details of most of those missions are still under a gag order and military censors continue to ban the publication of his photograph — making him the only soldier in IDF history whose picture can’t be published even posthumously.

Chezi and Itamar have become close friends with both each other and with General Alon — the three of them joined by tragedy. Alon, a longtime decorated fighter and national hero who eventually served as head of Military Intelligence and later as the head of the IDF Central Command, was in the shadow of both of their deaths as commander of Sayeret Matkal. He shares their pain — and he, too, is connected with the blood of their loved ones, the losses of the Wachsman and Moreno families intertwined with his own courage and battle scars.