Israeli paratrooper to recount war experience in Gaza

An Israeli paratrooper will recount his front-line war experience in the Gaza Strip during a presentation Sunday in Vacaville.

Yonatan Haber, of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, spent 60 days in Gaza, the Palestinian exclave on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, battling Hamas militants after the

Oct. 7 massacres in Israel.

Haber will speak at 4 p.m. in the Chabad Solano Center for Jewish Life, 730 E. Main St.

In a brief news release, Rabbi Chaim Zaklos, who leads the Chabad Solano Center, said Haber will provide “his first-hand account of what is and what isn't really going on there.”

Zaklos said the event, the first of its kind in Vacaville, “is being done to help further the divinely ordained mission of the Jews — to be a light unto the nations.”

“The hope is to accomplish being a light of truth in a world filled with so much darkness and lies,” he added in the prepared statement.

Now, during the season commemorating the holiday of Purim — the biblical story of Queen Esther of Persia, who is credited with helping thwart an attempted genocide of the Jews there in antiquity — the similarities to current events is not lost on Zaklos.

“As was needed and arose then, we now, too, need a hero to stand up for the truth that — with G-d's help — will change everything,” he wrote (with his punctuation). “We never know who that might be. Haber is a hero and we celebrate him.”

A suggested donation is $18 and sponsorships are $180.

Send an RSVP via email to JewishSolano.com/IDF or telephone (707) 592-5300.