Stand for Israel

Ori reunited with his family after 8 months in captivity

By: Amichai Farkas

In 1973, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar – Yom Kippur – Israel found itself under attack. Both the Egyptian and Syrian armies had encroached on Israel’s borders simultaneously, and within the first few hours of the Yom Kippur War, enemies were making headway on Israel’s northern and southern borders.

On the second day of war, Israeli Air Force Pilot Ori Shahak flew a Phantom fighter jet over Syrian territory. “I had just hit my intended target and was heading back towards Israeli soil,” Ori recalls, “when an Israeli jet was hit with a SAM missile just a few hundred yards ahead of my field of vision,” Within seconds Ori saw the jet’s  pilot parachute out.

A Second Attack

Instead of continuing toward safe land, Ori’s courage and compassion for his fellow soldier sprang into action. He circled the skies in an attempt to locate the fallen pilot’s position. “I hoped to call in a rescue team as soon as I could identify where the pilot had landed.” Ori explained. “Yet, as I turned my attention toward finding the pilot’s position, the Syrians managed to get a hit on my plane, which blew out one of its engines.”

Ori quickly shut down the damaged engine and planned to get back home with only the jet’s second engine, when, all of a sudden, he heard his co-pilot scream, “Fire on board!” Those words still ring in his mind today.

“Yalla – Out!” Ori yelled back as he slammed his hand as hard as he could on the eject button. He and his co-pilot parachuted through the Syrian skies for what felt like an eternity, but was in fact only a few minutes.

With a shaky voice, Ori described what transpired after his jet took the hit. “As we parachuted over enemy territory I could hear the Syrian gunfire coming toward us – time stood still, and then we hit ground,” he recalls. Read More »    Comments (0) »