Members of the security squad in the southern Israeli town of Shlomit, near the Egyptian border, received an alert on the morning of October 7 that terrorists had invaded the town of Pri Gan, just 10 kilometers from their own.
Shlomit's security squad numbered nine members, while Pri Gan's numbered four, but only two were in the town on the morning of October 7. Despite the risk of leaving their own families unprotected during what was unfolding as a complex attack, three members of Shlomit's security squad took off for Pri Gan, driving high above the speed limit in an effort to save their neighbors.
Upon reaching Pri Gan, the three scanned the area for the terrorists, arriving at the last home near the town's back gate. This home was found to be clear, and so the group moved to the second home in the row. Initially spotting an armed individual, they assumed him to be a friend and called him over to help. Within a minute, however, he turned on them with a Kalashnikov, and the security team opened fire at him.
Within a few minutes of shooting, all three members of Shlomit's team were injured - and called for their friends. "Come, come quickly, we have two here in critical condition, if you do not come we will lose them," Benny Meshulam, Shlomit's security chief, sent to the rest of his team back home.
A second team arrived at the scene, but they as well were shot and injured, leading to an additional call for reinforcements. The third team was warned to avoid the main road, since "anyone who arrives there is shot."
The third team also took bullets, but by that time the group from Shlomit had discerned where the gunfire was coming from and began to fire towards the source. After several hours, a small group of IDF soldiers arrived to help - but by then, the terrorists had left.
"They just understand that they are not managing over here, so they picked up their feet and ran off," Meshulam explained.
After the battle ended, members of Shlomit's security squad came out to assess the situation, and found that two of their friends, Aviad Cohen and Reuven Shishportish, had fallen in the battle.
"They are no longer with us," Shlomit's Oz Glick told his friends, after finding the two lying together on the ground, in what seemed a last embrace.
Meshulam, who was injured in the battle, said that the fallen were people who were always willing to come out and help others. "I think that's what led them to do this," he said.
"We paid a heavy price, but it comforts us a bit that we succeeded in preventing a massacre in an entire town - there was not a single person injured. From the town's perspective not a single person was injured in Pri Gan."
When asked what might have happened had they not gone out in Pri Gan's defense, security squad member Yehuda Rabinowitz said, "In the searches afterwards they found explosives, RPGs, they found tools to break in, to open the windows of the bomb shelters, like they did in other towns. And we prevented that."
Oz Glick added, "I don't want to think about it, it's only in my worst imaginations. But they would have gone from house to house."
"Afterwards we understood that it's not an entire town, it's the entire region. They infiltrated our region, essentially. There's Talmei Yosef, there's Dekel, and near that is Avshalom. And another chain of seven towns, and we're next in line."