Yonatan Elazari, 20, from Alon Shvut, enlisted two months ago in the Duvdevan unit.

During Sukkot, he was on leave from basic training and went to celebrate at the pre-military academy in the south where he studied before enlisting.

The alarms drove the academy’s students and numerous guests into the safe room, crowded together, until later in the morning, when the sounds of battle and Arabic shouts were heard clearly beyond the doors. It was clear that the terrorists were there, massacring civilians.

Yonatan wasn’t armed, of course, but he couldn’t help but fight them. ‘The boy gripped a steel fist in his hand,’ Yoram Taharlev wrote in his song ‘Legend of the 35th Brigade.’ And that’s exactly what Yonatan Elazari did. He left the safe room to fight the terrorists with stones in his hands.

Outside, he saw a severely wounded policeman, unable to operate his rifle, a weapon Yonatan didn’t recognize. He took the weapon, climbed onto the roof of the building, and with it and a handgun, probably from a dead terrorist he saw outside, began to kill terrorists. For a whole day, he was considered missing until he was found on the roof in his red sandals, a commando knife stuck in his belt, surrounded by many backpacks, evidence of the long battle he had managed, and a smile on his face, his final act performed with joy.”