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Louise Thomas
Editor
A wounded Israeli soldier urged the UK not to forget the mistake of Neville Chamberlain by being more like Churchill and standing up against “the evil of Iran”.
Barak Deri, an Israeli Defence Force reservist, has been hailed as a hero in his country and is visiting London this week as part of a mission to win support for Israel’s struggle in the ongoing war on multiple fronts in the Middle East.
The 32-year-old, who was wounded and is likely to be disabled for the rest of his life, arrived in the UK with a simple warning that “Israel’s war is the West’s war” and the demand: “We cannot be quiet, we must send a clear message that another Holocaust is not an option.”
He said: “I think that for me, I grew up on [Winston] Churchill. Coming here to the UK, it amazes me how people forget all this [Neville] Chamberlain deal in 1938.
“When you see so much evil from Iran to Syria, everything that they touch is just a black hole of tears, blood and suffering. I think to myself, didn’t we learn anything from history?”
Speaking to The Independent, the former special forces soldier told his shocking story from 7 October last year when his unit was first on the scene after Hamas had overrun Kibbutz Be’eri.
The action had come hours after he had been forced “to make the hardest decision” of his life between rescuing his brothers at the Nova Music Festival as it was swamped by Hamas terrorists or obeying orders to rescue more victims at the kibbutz.
He recalled how he had been at home in Tel Aviv as news of Hamas’s brutal attack broke and then receiving messages from his three brothers who were at the music festival. Dead female victims from that festival would later be paraded as trophies through Gaza by the terrorists.
Mr Deri said: “My brothers were under heavy terrorist attack, and one of them got injured. He was hiding in one place, and the other two were just hiding in another. I headed down south to my reserve unit, and I grabbed the first available team, and we headed towards my injured brother’s location.
“But midway there, one of the chief commanders called me on the radio, and he said that we are not going to my brothers, and we need to go to Kibbutz Be’eri where we have tons of terrorists. They took a lot of people as hostages there, and also a lot of people were still in shelters, and they were looking for help.
“It was the hardest decision I have ever had to take in my life.”
He obeyed orders, changed course and headed to the kibbutz passing bodies in burnt-out cars and on the roadside to ultimately be met with “an apocalyptic scene”.
“There were dead kids, women, men, elderly people, shot, butchered with knives and with bullets, everything that is unimaginable,” he added.
“We went from house to house. In some houses, we were able to get to families that were still at the shelter. In some houses, all of the family was butchered. And in some other houses, some of the family were safe and the other part of the family was butchered in the living room.”
Surviving families were told to stay away from the bodies of their relatives with warnings of booby traps, but it was a way to spare them the horror of what had happened to their loved ones.
He lost friends that day, but as dark descended he received the good news that his brothers, although in hospital, had survived.
Mr Deri spoke to The Independent as the world marked the first anniversary of the atrocity, and Sir Keir Starmer told MPs in the Commons the focus now needs to be on tackling the “malign force” of Iran.
He described how he had Palestinian friends at university and believed peace was achievable. But he said the events of 7 October 2023 had “changed everything” for him and his country.
But his frustration with much of the international response was hard to contain. While there has been outrage over Israel’s actions causing the death of more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the expansion of the war into Lebanon, Mr Deri insists it is unavoidable and a “fight for survival” for Israel.
Mr Deri does not bother to hide his contempt for French president Emmanuel Macron calling for an arms sales ban to Israel, or for the protesters in London who marched against Israel in their thousands the weekend before the anniversary. He describes those who danced on the streets to celebrate Hamas’s barbarity as “insane”.
He added: “People need to choose the right side of history. We saw a lot of hypocrisy also [in the protests] like queers for Palestine. It’s like chickens for KFC. Just a couple of years ago, there was a gay guy in Jericho that was decapitated.”
Mr Deri admitted “not everything Israel is doing is good” and said part of him yearns for peace, adding: “I’m going be disabled for the rest of my life. I saw so much death. Trust me, there is nothing that I want more than peace for us, for Palestinians, for people in Lebanon.”
But he insisted that if Israel does not continue to make a stand then the rest of the world will suffer the consequences.
He said: “We saw evil in the eyes [of Hamas], it's exposed themselves. People can choose to stand with Western values or not but, honestly I truly think that we will see the backlash in Europe if they don’t. I think there are a lot of good people who still understand that.”
Foreign secretary David Lammy is visiting Jordan and Bahrain in the Middle East on Wednesday and is expected to repeat calls for de-escalation of the conflict.
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