Lt. Col. Salman Habaka, 33, who had been determined not to return to his wife and two-year-old son, until safety was restored to southern Israel, was killed on November 2nd in northern Gaza.
“We will stay here as long as we are needed,” he had told The Jerusalem Post, in a telephone interview from the southern border during the first week of the war.
“We will not leave here until we have ensured that the security of the communities here has been restored to what it was” before the Hamas infiltration into the south on October 7, he had said.
During that attack, Hamas had killed 1,400 people and taken over 242 captives.
“We will not leave until we strike at the enemy and return the hostages,” said Habaka, as he described with clarity the goals of his mission.
As the commander of the 53rd battalion of the Armored Corps, he was the most senior officer killed during the ground campaign when he was fatally shot by Palestinian terrorists.
In the initial days of the Gaza war, he had interviewed extensively with the Israeli media, including with The Jerusalem Post, which according to the army, was the last media outlet to speak with him.
Before entering Gaza, he published a video, in which he said that there was “no option but victory.”
In a message to the Israeli public, he said, “Our strength is in our unity. This is the time to be together. This is the time to unite and to be there for each other.”
Habaka had been home, in his northern Druze village Yanuh-Jat, when he received a message on October 7 at 7:30 a.m. to mobilize his armored battalion due to the attack on the South.
From that moment and until the first tanks entered the southern communities captured by Hamas, it took about seven hours, he said.
The unit itself had been dispersed, with some in the field — but not in the south — and others at home for the Sabbath and the holiday, he said.
Among the communities they helped rescue was Kibbutz Be’eri, where Hamas had killed more than 100 residents of the small community and where some of the worst atrocities had occurred.
Habaka has been lauded as one of the heroes of the battle to seize control of the kibbutz which had been captured by Hamas.
The mission, he said, was to kill as many terrorists as possible and to help families hiding in their homes, to safely escape, he said.
The presence of the tanks provided cover for the rescue teams to enter the homes, Habaka said.
“I don’t think the other side (Hamas terrorists) imagined that we would get there so fast,” he said. The tanks helped break the will of the terrorists who understood they had to flee or be killed, Habaka explained.
“Now that we have saved who we could save,” in this next stage,
The 53rd battalion, he said, is prepared to do whatever is needed” in the battle against Hamas, he said.
Learning of his son's death
Habaka’s father Eiman told KAN news he knew his son had been killed the moment he saw a military vehicle approaching his home on Thursday morning.
“It fell on us like a bolt of lightning. I wasn’t prepared for it,” he said.
Just last week the family and a group of friends met him in the south, prior to his entry to Gaza.
In describing his son, Eiman said that he was a private and national hero who fought for the nation and fell on its behalf.
The Jerusalem Post and OneFamily are working together to help support the victims of the Hamas massacre and the soldiers of Israel who have been drafted to ensure that it never happens again.