The unknown fighter who made history and brought honor to the Druze

All contact was lost with Tamir at around 5 a.m. There was no response to radio calls from the crew commander, Major Y., nor did he answer calls to his mobile telephone. His fellow comrades in the elite reconnaissance Sayeret Matkal unit also tried to reach him, but to no avail. Despite the loss of contact, nobody even considered the possibility that Tamir was no longer alive.

At dawn, Major Y. set out by jeep to search for Tamir only to return empty-handed. At 6:45 a.m., he set out by foot, scouring the rocky, desert terrain surrounding the Ashosh River stream. After a 45-minute search, he was on the verge of despair. That was when he decided to return.

"Then I saw a cliff that was about seven or eight meters high," he said. "My heart dropped. I was afraid that he had fallen and perhaps broken his leg. I darted quickly toward the cliff, but there was no sign of him. That was when I understood that this terrain, that soldiers wandered across to do solo navigations, is not what it appears to be at first glance."

"There was another cliff nearby, and from afar I could see his uniform," Major Y. said. "I ran toward him, and I immediately called for a rescue helicopter. At that point, there was no sign of life. I tried to grasp at the very last vestiges of hope, I performed CPR, but this was an emotional reaction, not a rational one. I knew that this was a lost cause, that he had been dead for a while. I was the one who sent him there, I killed him!"

First Sgt. Tamir Nevuani was a trailblazer. This beaming youth from the village of Julis was close to realizing his dream — becoming the first-ever Druze soldier to serve in Sayeret Matkal. Indeed, he was just a hair's length away from completing the grueling training course that is a prerequisite for acceptance into the prestigious unit. On Jan. 1, 2008, the life of this 19-year-old was cut tragically short. In the early stages of the final training leg, he fell to his death from a cliff in the early morning hours.

Even today, over five years after the tragedy, Tamir can be seen and felt in virtually every corner of his parents' home. His portrait hangs on the living room wall. Next to it is a poem written by his father Nawaf's ninth-grade students in Tamir's honor. Upstairs is a room converted into a giant memorial, with dozens of pictures and letters depicting and describing the various points in Tamir's life.

His clothes, neatly folded, lie there as if he is expected home any minute. There are his army fatigues, his personal weapon, his army vest, his jeans, dress shirt, and sneakers.

Tamir was the fourth of six children. Two of his older brothers still serve in elite IDF units. Another brother, Kamal, 29, served in the Herev Battalion, which is popularly known as the "Druze Battalion." His younger brother, Salman, 22, enlisted in the army shortly after Tamir, following his older brother into an elite unit. He completed his military service a few months ago. Tamir's young sister, Ranin, is currently in 10th grade. Samah, his mother, has yet to recover from the tremendous blow. She can barely utter a word, and tears flood her eyes.

"We didn't even know that Tamir was in Sayeret Matkal," said Nawaf, a retired math teacher who now runs a catering service. "He told us he was in the Paratroopers, and then he moved to Duvdevan. It was only three months before he was killed that we discovered it totally by chance. Tamir underwent minor surgery, and his team came to visit him. Y., his commander, told me that he was one of the top soldiers in the unit."

Ten days before his death, Tamir asked his father to invite one of his comrades and his family from the Haifa area for a get-together in their home to celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday. "It was important for Tamir that we get to know him," Nawaf said. "It's as if this was the last will and testament that he left behind, because that same friend is still in touch with us to this very day."

A week later, Nawaf and his son spoke on the telephone for the last time. "He said that they were preparing navigation exercises and that tomorrow they would set out for the field," he said. "'It won't be easy, but we'll get through it,' he told me. I wished him success, and I asked him to call me when he finished."

Salman was just 16 years old at the time. "After the surgery, shortly before he died, Tamir was at home quite a bit," he said. "During Hanukkah, we went every day to eat jelly donuts. He told me that I was the reason he was going back to the army overweight. He liked to ride his motorcycle and take trips in the field. He planned to buy a new motorcycle after completing his training and to give me his old motorcycle as a gift. To this day the motorcycle is here."

"The 'being together' helped me a lot"

Major Y. sits on his couch in his Ramat Gan apartment. The pain is written all over his face. He remembers all of the details of what happened on that fateful night.

"From the outset of the navigation exercise, there were problems in the field," he said. "Half of the troops reached a point that was impossible to cross, and they got delayed. Then we lost contact with another soldier for two hours after he wandered off trail. Another soldier fell and sprained his leg. These are things that usually happen, but the feeling at the time was that we did not get off on the right foot."

"It was a dark night," he said. "I remember that the visibility was 19 percent. The field appeared to be safe. There were some communication problems with Tamir from the beginning, apparently due to a malfunction in the two-way radio. I talked to him on his cell phone, because the injury that required him to have surgery was flaring up again. He didn't want the other soldiers to hear it on the radio. I decided to stop his navigation at the 'Maavar Hova' meeting point before he began the climb to the final destination, but I didn't tell him this so that he would have to deal with the uncertainty and so that he wouldn't give up."

"At 3:45 a.m., the last soldier reached the 'Maavar Hova' meeting point, and Tamir still did not show up," Y. said. "We talked on the phone, and it became clear that he was lost. I sent up a light flare, and he saw it from the northeast, so we had a general idea of his whereabouts."

It was at this point that contact was lost. Hours later, Y. discovered Tamir's body. "The entire navigation was halted, and I had reached the soldiers," he said. "They already understood what had happened because they had heard that Tamir did not answer the two-way radio. They also saw me come back to the meeting point covered with blood which drenched me while I was administering CPR."

"Two days later, I went back there to try to get a better understanding of what had happened," he said. "Tamir spotted the cliff, and he tried to get around it from the right by way of a narrow trail. When he was walking on the trail, which went right along the edge of the cliff, he slipped, and the heavy vest that he was carrying simply pulled him down. He fell on his head, and died instantly. The doctor said that nothing would've helped him, but I was very disappointed in myself over the fact that it took me three hours to reach him."

"The unit commander decided against disbanding the team, and it completed the training course three months later," he said. "This sense of 'being together' really helped me a great deal. I had many sessions with a psychologist, but it was only four years later when I took a trip abroad and did a Vipassana workshop that I managed to live with myself again and with my guilt. To this day, I can't understand how I was such an idiot, letting him get lost for such a long time. If I could do it over again, I would tell him: 'Stop, wait for me to come to you.'"

A village rocked

"On a Tuesday morning, I was at school," Nawaf said. "All of a sudden, I was getting telephone calls from people who normally do not call me. They asked me where Tamir was, and I told them that he was completing navigations. That was when I started to get suspicious, so I called Y., but he didn't answer. I left a message for him, asking him to let me know if something had happened. Then he told me that he heard the message, but he was not permitted to call me back because the city officer [who was responsible for notifying families] was already on his way to the school. During fourth-period class, the secretary burst into the classroom and asked me to report to the principal's office. That was where the city officer and two of my good friends were waiting."

"At the time I had three sons in the army," he said. "This was a very difficult moment, waiting to hear what had happened to one of them. They told me that Tamir had died. I immediately thought of my wife, who was alone at home and who would get the news."

That evening, soldiers from Tamir's team visited Julis. "I didn't know what to say to them," Y. said. "When we got to the community center in the village, where mourners had gathered, his father came up to me, embraced me, and said: 'I mourn your loss.'"

Ehud Olmert, who served as prime minister at the time, called Nawaf to offer his condolences. Maj. Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan said: "Tamir went on his own, so that we could all venture together."

"There was a real earthquake in the village," Nawaf said. "Nobody knew that Tamir was in Sayeret Matkal. He had made history."

"Druze society has changed"

Three weeks after Tamir's death, his father and four brothers insisted on taking a trip to the area where the tragedy took place. "It was important for me to see what happened and where," Nawaf said. "This was even more difficult than the funeral. Each one of us needed a few moments alone to gather our thoughts. The footsteps he left were still there. I believe in fate, so I didn't need an investigation to understand that Tamir died as a result of human error."

"I harbor no anger toward the unit or the commanders," he said. "The fact that this happened during training instead of in battle makes coping with the death much tougher. My wife constantly cries. To this day, she is pained to think of what he went through during those late night hours, all alone."

Since the tragedy, the family makes a pilgrimage to the site every year on the day of his death. Dozens of people, family members, friends, soldiers, and their relatives join them. In a nearby parking lot, a memorial bearing the insignia of Sayeret Matkal was erected in Tamir's honor. The father of one of Tamir's comrades sculpted the stone, which was unveiled on the one-year anniversary of his death.

"Tamir's friends are 25 years old today," Nawaf said. "He was supposed to be an officer by now. When I see them, I always think about what would've happened and where he would've got to if he had been alive. On Memorial Day, a lot of people come here, because after Tamir's death something changed. The 'Follow Me' initiative, which prepares youth for the tough physical entry tests for elite units (gibush), was introduced. They understood that this was possible."

"We stopped celebrating Independence Day," he said. "It's just too hard, coming immediately after Memorial Day."

"Druze society has changed," Salman said. "In years past, everybody in the village enlisted and joined combat units, but there were one or two in a unit like Duvdevan. Now there are five or six in Duvdevan, and 15 Druze soldiers complete the Paratroopers entry training course every year. Believe it or not, there's a shortage of Druze in the Herev Battalion. The problem is that soldiers receive a quality ranking after a five-minute conversation with the enlistment office, and there could be language difficulties at work here. So there are quite a number of good people that could go very far but are overlooked."

Did you try to follow in his footsteps-

"I enlisted in an elite unit, and it wasn't easy to persuade my mother to sign the permission notice. It was weird being in navigations, going through what Tamir went through. A year later, I went to a different unit."

What happened to Major Y.? The words he wrote in a commemorative book in Tamir's honor just four days after the fall say it all.

"I still don't understand or grasp it. It's not logical. It can't be. Three images constantly run through my mind. The first is you lying underneath the cliff. I am always reminded of how I spotted you between the rocks, how I ran in your direction. The second image is me turning you over and seeing your wounded face. The third is you smiling like you always do. I am reminded of this, and a smile immediately springs across my face. Every morning, I wake up and think for a moment, 'Maybe this is all a bad dream. Maybe this didn't happen, and in a few moments you will come back running, smiling.'"

"From an unknown fighter who made history to someone who in his own way, humbly and quietly, became an admired fighter mourned by an entire village and a country. Why did such a tragedy have to happen? Why? Why? Why? ...

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