Two days after the October 7 massacre, Dr. Eitan Ne’eman, a senior physician in the pediatric intensive care unit at Soroka Medical Center, was killed in battle while fighting Hamas terrorists near the Gaza border. More than two years later, the remarkable story of his heroism has finally been revealed.
Rabbi Shraga Dahan, a military rabbi who handled Dr. Ne’eman’s body when it was brought to the Shura military base for identification, told the doctor’s widow, Yael: “His hand was clenched, and inside was a grenade. A live grenade with the pin removed.”
The chilling revelation came to Yael this week during a joint bar and bat mitzvah celebration for the children of fallen IDF soldiers, held in Jerusalem’s Western Wall tunnels. The event was organized by the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization.
A chance encounter reveals the truth
Yael attended the ceremony with her children and, by chance, was seated next to Rabbi Dahan, who had helped organize the event. She recalled that she had almost skipped the celebration, overwhelmed by memories of her husband’s heroism as a doctor and the pain of marking two years since his death.
A casual conversation soon took an unexpected turn. When the rabbi asked which relative she had lost in the war, Yael replied that she was the widow of Eitan Ne’eman. His face changed, she said, and he responded gravely, “I know him from Shura.”
Rabbi Dahan, who oversaw one of the trucks that brought civilian victims to the base for identification, told her that Dr. Ne’eman’s body had been evacuated from Sha’ar HaNegev and mistakenly placed with civilians due to the chaos and overload at the time. “You never forget a case like that,” he said.
He described Ne’eman as appearing like a “special forces fighter,” covered in dust and battle grime. When Dahan saw his hand, he noticed it was gripping a grenade without a safety pin. He immediately halted all activity and called in a bomb disposal expert to neutralize the danger.
“He used a Hamas grenade”
When Yael later told her husband’s battalion commander about the rabbi’s discovery, he explained that the grenade was not Israeli—it was a Hamas grenade. “Eitan must have caught a grenade that the terrorists threw at him and intended to throw it back,” the commander said. “When you run out of ammunition, you use what you have—the enemy’s weapons. That’s the ultimate courage.”
The grenade, it was later discovered, was defective and did not explode, sparing others at the base.
Yael described the moment as a powerful sign of divine providence: “I never imagined I would receive a message from Eitan just days after the anniversary of his death—and during our son Yehuda’s bar mitzvah celebration, in the Western Wall tunnels, a place that meant so much to him.”
She added that when she told her daughter about the revelation, “she laughed in disbelief and said, ‘I can’t believe it, I’m holding a grenade in my hand right now,’” referring to a souvenir she happened to be holding.
A life of healing and sacrifice
Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Eitan Ne’eman, 45, was the son of the late Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman. He lived in Tene Omarim in the South Hebron Hills with his wife and seven children. A graduate of Ben-Gurion University, he specialized in pediatrics at Soroka and completed fellowships at Yale and Johns Hopkins.
On October 7, he was among the first doctors to treat the flood of wounded at Soroka before being called to reserve duty, where he fell in combat in Gaza.
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Meeting at the President’s Residence with war orphans celebrating their bar and bat mitzvahs
(Photo: Kobai Konaks)
Colleagues remembered him as a compassionate physician who “never gave up on any patient,” treating both Jewish and Bedouin children, as well as young patients from Gaza. “He fought for every life,” Yael said. “Who knows—maybe one of those children was the one who later killed him.”
The encounter with Rabbi Dahan also inspired a new partnership. Yael is now leading a project to create an interfaith network of mental health and spiritual support professionals who will accompany families facing life-threatening crises. It turned out that Dahan, too, works in the same field, and the two have since joined forces.
The special bar and bat mitzvah event brought together 48 IDF orphans who celebrated their coming of age in Jerusalem’s Old City. Organized annually for more than 25 years, this year’s celebration carried added weight: the number of bereaved families has surged since the Oct. 7 war.
According to the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization, more than 885 children have lost a parent since the Hamas attack, and 332 women have been widowed—more than in any 20-year period before.
“For bereaved families, milestones like bar and bat mitzvahs are deeply painful,” said Shlomi Nahmiason, CEO of the organization. “We do everything we can to recreate what their fathers would have done—whether it’s a trip abroad, a visit to the Western Wall, or a festive celebration. These families have paid the ultimate price for our freedom, and their children deserve the best celebration possible.”