Yaakov Krasniansky

Yaakov Krasniansky, who left the ultra-Orthodox world at the age of 17 and signed up with the army, fell fighting Hamas terrorists on the Gaza border kibbutz of Nahal Oz on October 7, helping to save the lives of residents such as Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon and his family.

The story of how the Tibons were rescued with the help of Amir’s father, retired general Noam Tibon, has been widely told.

On Sunday, Channel 13 ran an interview with Tibon in which he explained how he had come to identify the dead soldier lying on the street close to his house, and how he had met the family to express his thanks.

Few members of the Haredi community serve in the IDF. Those who decide to leave the ultra-Orthodox world are often ostracized.

Tibon, his wife, and his two small girls spent 10 hours barricaded in the protected room of their home as around 20 terrorists infiltrated the small community, while hundreds of others spread out into other Gaza border communities to kill, maim, burn, and torture. Some 1,400 people were massacred, including babies and entire families.

Krasniansky was an officer in a border police undercover unit.

On October 7, he and his unit were on duty at Nahal Oz.

Krasniansky and nine other soldiers fought alongside the kibbutz security team, killing many of the terrorists, and helping to block their advance until reinforcements arrived.

Soldiers who survived later told the Krasniansky family that their son had led the fighters, and that after he was killed, comrades had driven a protected vehicle around and around the body until it could be evacuated.

But Krasniansky’s mother Zvia told Channel 13 that what was good for their late son had been good for them and that he always did things with his whole heart.

He had shown “heroism of the spirit and the soul.”

When Amir Tibon left his house that Saturday, he saw the body in the road and set out to find out whose it was.

“Then one day, really late at night, I got a message from Shmuel Krasninsky, who, I later understood, was a brother of Yaakov, who fought and defended us,” Tibon recalled.

“He said ‘My brother was killed in the battle for Nahal Oz,’ and I said to him, ‘I absolutely must come and visit you.'”

Tibon drove to the family’s Jerusalem home and told them, “What a fighter! You don’t understand how many he killed, how many he saved, how many kibbutz families are alive today thanks to him and his friends.”

Tibon said the meeting was one of the most moving experiences of his life. “There I was, a leftwing kibbutznik, a journalist for [the left-of-center] Haaretz, sitting in front of Yaakov’s mother, a Haredi woman, and I’m telling her, ‘Thank you for your hero son, who fought for us and saved us and paid with his life.'”

“I so wanted to hug her, but I don’t know what the [modesty] rules are,” he went on. “And then she just gave me her hands, and we held hands, and we hugged, and cried together, and I told her the truth — that thanks to her son, and his heroic friends, we can hug our daughters before we go to sleep.”
Source: The Times of Israel