The Couple Who Survived and Reported for Duty

When Liron and Zohar, a young couple, went to the music festival in the south together, they never imagined they would get trapped in a war zone. After escaping the horrors of the massacre that occurred in the festival, the two received their call for reserve service. Following the brutal incident they just experienced, it was clear to both of them they would report for duty without hesitation.

Liron and Zohar are a young couple who attended the music festival in the town of Reim in southern Israel. As soon as the horrors of the festival ended, after losing friends and having to run for their lives from armed terrorists, they decided they must report for reserve duty together.

“We arrived at the party and, within a few hours, started hearing dozens of rocket interceptions above our heads.” Zohar explains, "At first, we didn't even understand what was going on, and our phones weren't with us. Within minutes, we realized this was not a one-time incident; we took our things and started running to the car.”

“All around us, people started running in panic; everything was terrifying,” she continues. “We got lucky and were the first ones to get out and get to our car. Our friends told us to go without them and that they would escape in another car. We could not imagine that this would mean the difference between life and death.”

“After a few minutes that felt like forever, we arrived at the fence of Kfar Maimon”, Zohar recalls painfully. “I got out of the car and yelled to the civilians for help. They helped us get in and took us to the town. The whole road was full of damaged cars and complete destruction.”

“At the same time, we were called for duty, and we knew no matter what, we had to go and protect our home.”

Both Zohar and Liron reported for reserve duty at the Combat Engineering Corps’ reserve battalion under the 6th Brigade. Zohar is a CPT (res.) and is now serving as a human resources officer at the battalion, and Liron is a SSGT (res.), a combat soldier in the battalion’s field evacuation unit.

“Now that I'm on reserve duty, I have something to do—I have a way to help, and I am. I still don’t know whether some of my friends are safe. But this difficult feeling gives me strength and encouragement to keep fighting for them and to make sure something like this ever happens again.