From Holiday Morning to Gaza Combat: An Armored Commander's October 7 Account
Reserve Major Golan Krieger independently mobilized his armored company on October 7, leading tanks from central Israel to the embattled south and fighting for two years.
On the morning of Simchat Torah 5784, Reserve Major Golan Krieger, an armored company commander, was praying at a synagogue in the settlement of Eli Zahav. As rumors of terrorist infiltration began pouring in from the south, he returned home and checked his phone. His son entered the living room and innocently asked why his father was using a phone on a holiday Sabbath. At that exact moment, his operational intuition kicked in: Krieger realized something extraordinary and catastrophic was unfolding, deciding not to wait for an official Order 8, but to independently mobilize his men.
In an interview with Oded Harosh, Krieger recounts the fierce moments of combat, the unprecedented military decisions, his severe injury in the Gaza Strip, and the penetrating insights he now brings in his new book.
The South is Bleeding
While preparing their tanks for action, the situation on the ground required the armored troops to abandon their vehicles and instantly transform into infantry soldiers carrying vests and ammunition magazines. The transition was an absolute shock for some of them. "I take the whole company and I tell them: friends, the south is bleeding, people are being murdered in kibbutzim and cities, we need forces to fight... The company looks at me in silence, absolutely no one can find the emotional strength to even respond to this news. And suddenly one of the guys, a guy named Haim, lowers his head and starts singing to himself: 'Do not fear, Israel, do not fear, for you are a lion's whelp'... And after a minute, an entire reserve company, 70-80 guys right and left, religious and secular - all singing together 'Am Yisrael Chai'," Krieger recounts.
Due to a severe shortage of heavy transporter drivers who were trapped in the peripheral settlements under fire, Krieger made a bold and unprecedented decision in the history of the IDF since the Yom Kippur War: to move eight Merkava Mark 4 tanks in an independent convoy across hundreds of kilometers from the center of the country to the south.
During the exhausting night drive, stopping to refuel and refresh at a gas station on Highway 6 around 02:00 at night, the fighters encountered a chilling surreal sight. An evacuation bus loaded with children, the elderly, and residents from the envelope kibbutzim arrived at the station. The encounter between the civilians who thought "there is no army" and the reserve soldiers who arrived with tanks to protect them ended in emotional tears: "The bus arrives at two in the morning, the door opens and children, boys, girls, the elderly step out... They ask us: 'Where are you from?' We tell them: 'We are reservists from the center of the country,' and they burst into tears. They realize that the people of Israel understand what is happening to them and are mobilizing to help them."
A Punch to the Stomach
When the forces arrived at the Yad Mordechai junction and Kfar Aza, the sights on the ground were unbearable: "You take a kind of punch to the stomach... You literally see a region in ruins, and I tell the soldiers: 'Don't stop, get to Kfar Aza as fast as possible, we are needed in combat there'."
Krieger describes the unique professional challenge faced by the Armored Corps in point-blank combat inside built-up areas and safe rooms (mamad) in the envelope settlements: "I never thought we would have to fight inside the State of Israel... How do you shoot at a safe room? What do you fire at a safe room, what type of shell? In Gaza and Lebanon there are no safe rooms, we never prepared for this, we didn't study this.
"This tool was critical to inject some massive firepower into the terrorists who were there, into the crazy chaos inside Be'eri and Kfar Aza, to come and say: 'We are here, we are here right now, let's see you come out'."
After months of fighting in the envelope, Krieger's company entered the deep ground maneuver in the Gaza Strip. Exactly on the anniversary of the beginning of the entry, during operational activity in Jabalia, Krieger was severely injured by an explosive device and terrorist gunfire: "I am moving forward with the tank and suddenly feel a big explosion, the whole tank moves like that... I climb up a bit high in the turret... and suddenly a terrific explosion, I feel my body literally burning, feel my face burning, I have a very, very strong burning sensation in my eyes. I realize I am injured."
Following an emergency evacuation to Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson and a series of complex eye surgeries, Krieger received good news from the ophthalmologist: "She said 'you will see again and you will return to fight'," Krieger recounts.
Despite the severe injury and vision problems, stubborn resolve brought Krieger back time and again to lead his company for nearly two years of combat across all sectors of the Strip.
The Truth is in the Tank
The turbulent experiences of recent years led Krieger to write an in-depth book analyzing the roots of the failure in the south. In his view, the core problem began long before October 7, in a long-standing policy of containment and backing down: "I return in my writing and say: another event and another event, there is some policy here. This is no longer a sequence of events, there is a policy of containment that blew up in our faces... This is not containment, this is cowardice. You are more deterred, you are ready to lose your soldiers as long as a larger war does not break out."
However, alongside the sharp criticism of the system and the political-military echelon in the past, Krieger emphasizes the most important lesson for the future - national unity revealing itself on the ground: "The truth is not with you in the studios, the truth is with us in the tank. When I am inside my tank the whole war with a friend who supports the Kaplan protests and votes left, and another friend who immigrated from the Soviet Union, we put everything aside. In the tank, you focus on one thing only - only the eternity of Israel, defense of the home, the future, and the children."
