When Tal Brody walked in the closing ceremony of the European Basketball Championship in Spain, it was already clear that something was happening in the country. Rumors that the Syrian and Egyptian armies had launched a surprise attack on the State of Israel began to spread to the players of the Israeli delegation and its personnel, mainly through the headset of Channel One's only envoy to the championship at the time - Dan Shilon.
It was a lukewarm performance by the team, which ended the day before with a 78-96 victory over Turkey in the seventh-place game.
The team worked hard to get the game to end before Yom Kippur began, the players hurried to shower and eat a breakaway meal, and managed to join members of the local Jewish community in the Kol Nidre prayer. That game marked the cessation of Israeli sports, when no one knew when we would return to the local and international arenas.
Alongside Brody, Mickey Berkowitz, Boaz Yanai, Barry Leibovitz, Hanan Keren and Itamar Marzel, under the guidance of coach Avraham Hamo, Gur Ben-David (70), who after completing his pilot course played, in addition to his combat pilot service, for Hapoel Tel Aviv and Hapoel Givat-Yagur.
"Dissonance between war and basketball." Gur Ben-David, Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
From the reports that began to arrive, Ben-David realized that upon landing in Israel he would immediately return to his squadron, the 110th Skyhawk Squadron at Ramat David. At the end of Yom Kippur, the team flew to Rome, where they met many Israeli players who were looking for ways to board every possible plane that would bring them back to the country. The actors – perhaps out of security concerns that they would be the target of a terrorist attack – boarded a flight.
Upon landing, they took his father's cub, Asael Ben-David, who was the head of the delegation to Spain and chairman of the Israel Basketball Association, and his mother, who was waiting in the field, straight to the base. On Monday afternoon, less than 48 hours after the European Championships ended, Ben-David made his first sortie of the war, bombing targets in Port Said, Egypt. He then bombed Syria and flew 28 sorties during the war.
Players of the Israel national basketball team in the 70s. From right: Gur Ben-David, Boaz Yanai, Mickey Berkowitz and Hanan Keren, photo from the private album
"On Friday I was still playing basketball at the European Championships, and on Monday I flew for my first ever operational sortie," he recalls. "It was a strange flight, because until then I had only been in training and suddenly I was with a plane full of fuel and bombs.
"After the war ended, I returned to the Israeli national team, and we flew on a victory tour in the Jewish communities in the United States. A few months ago I was still bombing and now I'm at Madison Square Garden, looking at the NBA giants and realizing that they and I are not in the same sport. These are my two memories: the dissonance between war and basketball, and the realization that the U.S. doesn't play the same game we did."
Ben-David as an actor, photo: from the private album
"We prayed he was in captivity"
Another athlete who became perhaps the most famous wounded in the Yom Kippur War is Gideon Reiss (80) from Kibbutz Givat Brenner, who now lives in the United States and was then a basketball player for Hapoel Givat Brenner of the first division and Israeli long jump champion.
On the third day of the war, near Tel Mashra in the Golan Heights, its centurion tank was hit by a Sager missile. Rice, who was the company commander, was wounded in his right hand and eye and lost consciousness for a few seconds. Under fire, the Syrian commando reported his injury to the battalion commander, and even managed to joke about how lucky he was left-handed. When he was evacuated by helicopter to Rambam Hospital, the severity of the injury began to become apparent: he lost his eye, ring finger and forearm in his right hand as a result of the impact.
For his actions on the battlefield, Rice was awarded the Medal of Merit, and after a year of rehabilitation he returned to playing basketball with eight fingers and one eye. Being left-handed, he also returned to sniping from any distance. His return game for Hapoel Givat Brenner was against Maccabi Ramat Gan. He finished the game with 12 points, en route to a career-high 3,855 points, a feat that places him among the 50 greatest scorers in state history.
The Medal of Masterpiece. Gideon Rice, photo: from the private album
The most famous basketball player who fell in the Yom Kippur War was Yitzhak Hochman ("Hochele"), who played for Elitzur Tel Aviv and was the first to reach the Israeli national team from the second division. Hochman also played for Hapoel Holon under Yehoshua Rozin, and even managed to play handball for Maccabi Tel Aviv for six months.
Just before the end of the war, on 24 October, Hochmann took part in the Battle of Suez. He entered in a half-track to help his comrades who were trapped on the city's main street, sustained a direct hit and was killed along with eight other fighters. For three months there was still hope that he was among the captives whose identity the Egyptians hid, but his body was returned and he was laid to rest while his wife gave birth to their daughter. His beloved Elitzur Tel Aviv was promoted to the first basketball league for the first time in history, but he did not live to see it.
"Hochele was 30 at the time, and I was 23, an armored fighter," his brother, Moti Hochman, told Israel Hayom a few years ago. "I fought in the Golan Heights, in the Syrian enclave, and only a while after he was killed was I released for a weekend at home and received the news of his absence from my family. We were shocked. Hochele influenced every member of the household, and in the first few months the difficulty was great, mainly because of the uncertainty. No one could tell us what happened. Throughout the entire period, we prayed that he was taken prisoner, but after the separation of forces agreement with the Egyptians, he was returned to Israel in a coffin with 20 other martyrs and his body was identified."
Fell in battle in Suez. The late Yitzhak Hochman (Hochele), right, in 1971, photo: from the family album
Five months late (because of the war) and five days (because of a referees' strike), the senior basketball league opened on March 6, 1974. The games opened with a minute of silence in memory of the fallen in the war and the cup factory was cancelled, due to the desire to end the league as soon as possible so as not to harm the next season. It was also decided that there would be no relegation, so the league grew the following season to 14 teams. Maccabi Tel Aviv won the championship, another undefeated season.
"I thought we were going on a trip"
Football is also immediately silent because of the Yom Kippur War. Most of Israel's footballers were recruited, as were members of the IFA. The opening round was postponed at the 90th minute, and the FA decided that the season would return to normal a week after the war ended, regardless of the line-up. Only two footballers continued to play football during the war - Legionnaires Motella Spiegler, who played for F.K. Paris, and Giora Spiegel, who played for Strasbourg.
Yeshayahu (Shaya) Schwager, a Haifa star who was one of the greatest defenders in the history of the green team and part of the team that made history in Mexico 1970, was also a particularly brave armored officer who rescued the wounded under fire in the Golan Heights. He returned from the battlefield and died of cardiac arrest in 2000, at the age of 54.
Rescued the wounded. Yeshayahu Schwager, photo: from the Maccabi Haifa website
Yohanan Wallach, 78, a footballer from Haifa's Red Side and a player of the 1970 Mexico national team himself, faced direct Syrian fire twice in the war, but he and his comrades managed to eliminate the attackers. Wallach continued to serve in the reserves for five months after the end of the war, and during the impromptu football season zigzagged between the army and the pitch, sometimes changing his uniform and returning to his army uniform when the final whistle sounded.
Bread in the north. Yohanan Wallach, Photo: Moshe Milner/GPO
Another great player who still carries memories of the war to this day is Zvika Rosen from Maccabi Tel Aviv, who also played for the national team at the World Cup in Mexico. "I was on the Armored Corps soccer team, and after the war broke out they told us we were going down to Sinai," he recalls. "I thought we were going on a trip, and suddenly you see the bodies of soldiers on both sides and you have to cover them. It's a memory that accompanies me to this day, these sights haunted me for years."
During the war, Rosen found himself in a position he did not expect. "Maccabi Tel Aviv arranged a C license for us, so that we would have a profession after our sports career, so I knew how to drive a truck and brought supplies to the soldiers at bases and outposts," he says.
"A memory that accompanies me." Zvika Rosen, Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
After that, there was also football, when, together with coach David Schweitzer and referee Menachem Ashkenazi, Rosen walked around the bases and outposts and gave lectures to the fighters. "My memory isn't anything anymore, because I'm 50 plus almost 30, but we sat there talking about football," he says. "I remember the soldiers' looks when they suddenly saw us in front of their eyes. Only after two and a half months did I return home, because the Israeli national team went to the United States for a game and they needed me, so I got released. It was rare, because after the war they didn't want to release any soldiers."
160 footballers were drafted during the war, along with seven coaches. One of them was the bus driver who for two consecutive days was at the wheel without turning a blind eye to transport soldiers - the legendary Yitzhak Schneor. The following season, Maccabi Netanya finished in first place and won the championship. It was the season with the fewest attendance since soccer spectators began to be monitored. The Israeli public, battered and bruised, left bald spots in the stands, and only the soldiers, who entered for free, made sure to come before and after the war.
Rosen in national team uniform, photo: Moshe Milner/GPO
Volleyball and handball spaces
But it wasn't just the big and well-known sports that were hurt by the war. Israeli volleyball, which at that time was at its peak in the kibbutzim, suffered many losses, and in fact sent the most soldiers to the battlefield, given that most of the amateur athletes involved in it were first and foremost soldiers in the most combat units.
Major Eitan Welish z"l, a battalion sergeant in the 217th Reserve Armored Brigade that was the first to enter Sinai during the Yom Kippur War, set up volleyball in Kibbutz Ginosar and fell during the battles. Captain David Glazer z"l and Lieutenant Shimon Springer, z"l, who were among the founders of the volleyball team of Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, fell in the war and as a result their team disbanded. Sergeant Moti Sadan z"l, one of the most prominent players of Hapoel Beit Zera, who qualified with them to the first division, also did not return from the battlefield. Unfortunately, volleyball will continue to provide many outstanding soldiers who will fall in the Israeli campaigns that will follow.
Learn from Rosen. IDF soldiers playing soccer on the southern front, photo: courtesy of the IDF Archives and the Defense Establishment, photo: IDF Spokesperson's photographers
The men's handball league ended six rounds to the end of the season, and due to the large number of athletes on the battlefield was not renewed. Among the well-known handballers of that period who fell is Sergeant Alexander Yaniv z"l, whose memory is commemorated by the handball association where he grew up in Holon. Another memorable and sad incident occurred in the Hapoel Kfar Menachem team, which lost no less than three of its players: Lieutenant Reuven Cohen, Corporal Gabriel Baram and Sergeant Amos Berger.
In the international arena, Israel was then part of Asia and competed in the continental championships. The Davis Cup meeting between Israel and Iran, scheduled for October 9, 1973 in Iran, has been postponed to an unknown date. When it took place, the Iranians crushed the Israelis 1-4. Israel also had to forgo participation in the Asian Fencing Championships, also held in Iran, while the light athletics team, which was preparing for the first Asian Championships, scheduled to be held in the Philippines from November 18 to 23, eventually consisted of only five athletes.
The following year, an Israeli delegation went to Tehran for the last Asian Games in which we participated as a country. The delegation won 19 medals, including 7 gold (three by Esther Roth Shahamorov and one by the basketball team), 4 silver (one by the soccer team) and 8 bronze. Athletes from Arab countries, Pakistan, China and North Korea refused to compete against Israeli athletes for political reasons.
Years away, if today it sounds almost imaginary that stars like Manor Solomon or Dani Avdija would put on uniforms and go to fight in Jenin or Lebanon, in that war Israeli sports were involved in the fighting, many athletes were injured on the battlefield and other athletes paid the heaviest price for defending the place we live in.
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