The Air Force detects terrorists on the ground in the Gaza Strip.
December 23, 2023/IDF spokesman
"He was as excited by transporting tanks as he was by flying a fighter jet," said the Yifaat kibbutz about Lt. Col. Eitan Barzilai, 69, who passed away the other day. Barzilai was an F-15 pilot for many years, and when the war began, he immediately volunteered for reserve service as a transport driver and drove tanks. Even in the fierce battles - he entered the Gaza Strip with the truck to evacuate damaged tanks.
At the end of the week he was supposed to finish his long reserve service - but yesterday, when he was on vacation at home, he suffered a heart attack and died. Yesterday he was laid to rest in the cemetery of Kibbutz Yifat in the Jezreel Valley.
Eitan was born in Yifat in October 1954, about six months after the kibbutz's ascension to the land, the son of Sarah and Aryeh and Eli's younger brothers, Danny and Gideon. The father, Aryeh, survived the extermination camps, including Auschwitz. When he was released from the death camp, shekel 36 kilograms.
"The love of danger prepared him for battle."
Barzilai/courtesy of the family
Ran Ron, a member of Yifat, and Eitan's childhood friend, paid tribute to him: "From his childhood he preferred the expanses of the fields and nature to sitting in class and obeying discipline and authority. Most of the teachers accepted his way and also preferred to allow him to leave the classroom and engage in things that interested him," he told about the period where the two studied together in the kibbutz.
"When he grew up a little he became known for his fondness for tractors and motorized machinery, he worked in the field and admired the person in charge at the kibbutz who allowed him to drive almost anything. Since he was undisciplined from a young age, he did not miss a number of safety incidents, or rather non-safety incidents, from which he always escaped safely."
In the kibbutz they say that when he was in the 9th grade, he got on a "Bedford" truck and drove it to visit his girlfriend.
His father made sure that Eitan would learn music, and he did turn out to be a talented saxophone player.
Before his enlistment in the IDF, Eitan left for a year of service as an instructor at the youth center working and studying in Kiryat Haim. "It seems that driving the agricultural implements and being close to the dangers was just a preparation for his natural recruitment to the pilot course," said Ron. At the end of the course, he was assigned as a young pilot to the respected 15-F squadron. most of his military service, and in June 1981 he even participated in "Operation Opera" to bomb the reactor in Iraq, as one of the pilots of the planes covering the bombers.
During the years he served as a pilot, Ethan married Neta, and they had 3 children - Gili, Oren and Ella. Over the years, she joined the family Also Orli as an adopted sister in everything. After Eitan and Neta separated, Eitan met Hadva, whom he married - and with whom he returned to Lifat.
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Reserve Lt. Col. Eitan Barzilai with all the grandchildren and "Grandma Liko", his wife Hadva, at the summer camp/courtesy of the family
After he was released from his duties in the Air Force, he decided to continue contributing his energy in the army, obtained a license for a truck and volunteered for the position of transporting tanks.
His last call-up to the reserves was before the seventh of October, for routine transportation tasks, but since the war started, he stayed on various tasks for a very long period of time, and in the last few weeks he rarely went home.
Moshe Peled, former colonel, MK and former deputy minister, who is also a volunteer in the transportation unit, said that "Eitan Barzilai worked very hard during the war; he worked on carriers with a winch that enter Gaza to lift damaged tools that cannot be lifted onto the carriers on the way ".
Peled noted that the transport unit has about 500 drivers who have already passed the age of 50 and who volunteered in the war to drive transport trucks.
"The desire to volunteer and drive a transport truck burned in Eitan's bones," said Moshe Tarshish, a member of Kibbutz Yifat.
He enjoyed driving tanks and treated it with the same seriousness and passion as he treated flying the 15-F."
Barzilai is survived by his wife Hadva, and his children Gili, Oren, Ella, Orli, Tzachi, Ben and Michael, his grandchildren and three brothers.
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