95-yr-old Israeli returns to battlefield to fight Hamas

NEW DELHI: A 95-year-old

Israeli reservist

has returned on the field to help his country fight the attack by Hamas, becoming the oldest one to do so, reported the New York Post.
A former combat soldier with Lehi, Ezra

Yachin

was called back "to motivate the IDF troops and to recount how he survived Arab pogroms in Jerusalem during his childhood,” as per Israel National News. The media shared a photo of him in his old uniform holding a rifle.
Celebrating his efforts,

Israeli

media personality Hananya Naftali wrote on X that his message is, “Don’t give up, not even now.”
Recaliing his childhood days when Israel wasn't independent, Yachin said that the British “prevented Jews from immigrating in many ways, and more than that, they did not prevent the Arabs who lived there from murdering the Jews."

“The Jews in the Land of Israel understood that they had to defend themselves,” Yachin said in a 2021 interview. “And so they set up the underground organizations, one of them being the Lehi organization,” he added.
Feeling compelled to join the efforts, Yachin said, “It was essential to fight the British so that we would have a country with an effective way to defend ourselves against anyone who tried to harm us,” he explained. “So that we would feel independent in our own country.”

Recalling the day United Nations voted to grant the Jewish people a homeland in Israel, Yachin said that just a day later “Arabs killed and slaughtered entire families and murdered Jews everywhere. They threatened us and kept their promises," New York Post reported.
“Then what is called the War of Independence began,” he added.
“We found ourselves in a very difficult situation with both the British and the Arabs rioting and mobilizing against us. From the roofs, from the windows, they were everywhere,” Yachin said.
“Jews were killed, and Jewish blood was spilled like water, and the British helped them,” he recounted.
Yachin claimed that as soon as the Arabs had cannons, they began to "celebrate," and the situation for the Jews residing in Israel only got worse.
“Every Jew who fell into their hands did not stay alive for more than a few seconds,” he claimed. “They had an exchange of photos — whoever had more photos of dead Jews was considered more senior in the community.
He further said that eventually the Jews decided to fight back.
He said in the 2021 interview that he dedicates his life to “pass on to future generations to come — to tell them about the price we had to pay for this land.”