IDF chief gives seriously wounded soldier and award of excellence

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi has given a soldier who was seriously wounded in a car-ramming attack earlier this month an award of excellence, the military says.

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 in the southern West Bank’s Hebron Hills.

Doctors at Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center were eventually forced to amputate his leg.

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 attack.

“Because of his injuries and surgeries, he could not come to the brigade’s award ceremony last week,” the army says.

As a result, Kohavi and the brigade’s commander, Col. David Songo, present the award to Ibrahim in the hospital.

— Judah Ari Gross