Eliraz Peretz
Eliraz PeretzIsrael news photo

One of the terrorists responsible for the ambush that killed IDF soldiers Eliraz Peretz and Ilan Sviatkovsky was killed this week in battle with soldiers. The terrorist, senior Islamic Jihad member Bassem Darmeh, died in a shootout after attempting to plant bombs targeting soldiers along the Gaza security fence.

The shootout occurred in the same region in which the attack on Peretz and Sviatkovsky's unit took place five months earlier.

Late on Thursday it was revealed that the soldier who took out Darmeh, an elite IDF unit commander whose name was revealed only as “Lieutenant Y,” is a graduate of the premilitary preparatory program Bnei David in the Samaria town of Eli. Bnei David strives to promote the view of “serving in the IDF as a value and a privilege,” according to program coordinators, as it teaches Torah.

Eliraz Peretz was also a graduate of Bnei David. A third graduate of the program, Lieutenant-Colonel “I,” is Lieutenant Y's commanding officer.

Bnei David's graduates are disproportionately likely to serve in elite combat units.Several graduates have been killed in battle. One well-known graduate is Roi Klein, who died in the Second Lebanon War when, crying out "Shma Yisrael", he threw himself on a grenade that had been thrown at his group, thereby saving the soldiers under his command. Klein, like Peretz, lived in Eli; both were survived by young wives and children.

Eliraz's son Or Chadash, whose name means “new light,” began first grade this week. Shulamit Peretz, Eliraz's widow, said that if a terrorist from the group that killed her husband had been killed at any other time “I wouldn't get very emotional, I'm not looking for revenge,” but that due to the fact that the terrorist was killed immediately before Or began school “it feels significant.”