IDF chief gives award to soldier who lost leg in West Bank ramming
Staff Sgt. Shadi Ibrahim missed ceremony because of his injuries so honor is presented to him in the hospital
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi presented a soldier who lost his leg in a car ramming attack earlier this month with an award of excellence on Wednesday, the military said.
Staff Sgt. Shadi Ibrahim, from the Druze town of Sajur in northern Israel, sustained serious injuries when a Palestinian man rammed his car into him outside the Negohot settlement in the southern West Bank’s Hebron Hills on May 14. Doctors at Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center were later forced to amputate his leg that was wounded in the attack.
Ibrahim, 20, a combat soldier in the 9th Battalion of the 401st Armored Brigade, was chosen as the recipient of the brigade’s award of excellence prior to the ramming attack. The military said he was picked to receive the award “for his praiseworthy actions.”
“Because of his injuries and surgeries, he could not come to the brigade’s award ceremony last week,” the army said.
As a result, Kohavi and the brigade’s commander, Col. David Songo, presented the award to Ibrahim in the hospital.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ibrahim was also visited in the hospital by the mayor of the Eshkol region, Gadi Yarkoni, who lost both of his legs when he was hit by a mortar shell that was fired from the Gaza Strip during the 2014 war.
“It was hard not to note the great emotion that Shadi experienced from Gadi’s visit. Gadi was no less emotional. He said he identified with what Shadi is going through and encouraged him on his journey,” a Soroka hospital spokesperson said.
According to the IDF, the driver who hit Ibrahim accelerated as he drove his car toward a group of soldiers who were standing next to a military post outside Negohot.
The driver struck Ibrahim before another serviceman opened fire at the car and killed him, an army spokesperson said at the time.
