Sharona Ran, the mother of Captain Or Yosef Ran, an officer in the elite Duvdevan undercover unit, recounts his last battles in a special interview with Arutz Sheva - Israel National News.
"He went to the war without blinking, knowing he was giving his life. Or Yosef lived with his partner in Tel Aviv. She woke him up with the first sirens, and while getting organized, he assembled his team. On the way, he spoke with Porat, another of my sons, and told him 'If we have to die - then this way. There is going to be a big war'," Ran remembers.
"They went south and reached the war zones by following field intelligence. Their first encounter was at the Black Arrow monument. Afterwards, reports came in about the Kfar Aza, and they started moving there. They reached a neighborhood of young people, and the police officer Katan Zoran, whose helmet camera recorded everything, directed them to a critically wounded person who had been lying there for several hours. They evacuated him and a resident of the town who had locked himself in a bomb shelter, crammed them into a jeep, and drove outside. Katan stayed with the wounded, and Or returned to the town."
Or Yosef continued moving from jeep to jeep, assisting in the extraction of civilians and casualties. "At a certain point, he was hit by a bullet in the neck and reported on the radio to the guys saying: 'So-andso was hit...and me, too.' He continued fighting and then was hit by another bullet in the neck and fell. A helicopter from the elite pararescue force Unit 669 landed there, and the doctor, who was managing the utter chaos there, recognized Or. The two were friends. The doctor pronounced him dead in the field."
"He managed to load Or onto the helicopter and evacuated the body. It was one of the miracles that happened to us because some bodies lay there for three and four days. Or's body arrived the same day, on Saturday night, at Soroka and then at Camp Shura, where all the bodies were being taken for identification. He was the second IDF casualty to be buried. The evacuation process took a very long time."
He was buried in a special military section in Itamar, in the mountains where he spent most of his life. "Having a military cemetery there is a miracle. I wanted him to be buried near home and not in some distant cemetery. We also donated the jeep and planted an orchard in his memory. It is the thing that most represents Or."
Hebrew interview: