Captain Bar Zonstein Fought with Outstanding Valor and Skill 

Captain Bar Zonstein was posted at the small “Mars” outpost on the Gaza border, along with 

the Golani auxiliary infantry force, Battalion 51. Around 6:30 the morning on Saturday 

October 7, his commander informed him that there was an enemy raid near Kibbutz Nirim, 

and he set out to the area with his tank and crew. This was the last time he heard from his 

commander, and from that point on, he was left to act independently, drawing information 

on the situation in the field from intermittent reports. He advanced with his tank alone, 

through the crop fields, and encountered a three-man terrorist squad, eliminating them with 

the tank machine gun. Further on, he encountered two terrorist squads, shote several and 

ran the others over. He then receives reports of the battle at the Kisufim outpost, makes his 

way there, and encounters two terrorist squads with anti-tank weapons, both of which he 

eliminates. 

He receives a report from one of his company’s tanks, which was protecting the kibbutzim of 

Nirim, Nir Oz and Magen, that the tank was hit and surrounded by terrorists. The soldiers 

inside that tank were wounded and the tank couldn’t rotate its turret. He liaised with the 

damaged tank and ordered it to follow him. On the way he identifies the tank of one of his 

platoon commanders, burnt. He identifies two terrorist pickup trucks full of bodies speeding  

towards Gaza. He fires at them twice and gets hit by two anti-tank grenades fired at him, 

hitting and damaging his solar tank. His tank began leaking solar and hundreds of terrorists 

surrounded it. He began shooting them with the machine gun and running them over with 

the tank. 

Both tanks – one with wounded soldiers and a disabled turret, and the other with leaking 

solar tanks – made their way to kibbutz Magen where they encountered and eliminated a 

four-men terrorist squad. Near Kibbutz Reim they decide to exit the defunct tank and return 

to the Mars outpost, to collect an additional tank. Captain Zonstein got a ride with one of his 

soldiers in the trunk of a Border Police car and they got off at the Kisufim intersection, where 

they made their way through terrorist infested terrain to the outpost, fighting terrorists the 

entire way. They eventually commandeered the tank and used it to continue fighting 

terrorists until Monday. Captain Zonstein and his soldiers managed to kill approximately 70- 

90 terrorist within two and a half days of fighting.