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Three generations of one family who paid a price to protect Israel

Edan Kleiman, who was paralysed by Hamas, is now the chairman of Beit Halochem

May 9, 2024 10:45
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Edan Klaiman
3 min read

When Edan Kleiman was only three weeks old, his father, Arye, was the only member of his unit to survive an Egyptian ambush during the Yom Kippur War, though he was shot in his left shoulder. Nearly 20 years later, in 1992, Edan would also be shot in his left shoulder with the same weapon, a Kalashnikov AK-47, fighting Hamas in Khan Younis in Gaza.

Edan’s grandfather, Rudolf Katzenstein, a member of the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organisation that operated throughout Mandatory Palestine, was killed in action just five days before the creation of Israel.

Edan's grandfather, Rudolf[Missing Credit]

Edan says he was raised in a “very Zionist and patriotic family” and was “surrounded by war stories” and talk of “what it means to fight for my country”. Even his high school, Rene Cassin in Jerusalem, became well known in the 1990s when six graduates from a single year were killed on reserve military duty.

“Patriotism is in my family, my working place, among my friends and community; it is something we feel very deeply in our soul,” says Edan. It felt only “natural” that at 18 he would serve in an IDF combat unit as part of the Givati Brigade and, in 1992, he was shot by Hamas terrorists, causing him to be paralysed from the chest down and forever confined to a wheelchair.

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