‘I shot down drones over Israel and was back in my office sending emails by 4pm’

A lawyer by day, by 4pm Sunday, the reservist was back in the office “shooting off emails” as opposed to shooting down missiles. Like the others in his squadron, who are the likes of engineers and teachers, it is a complex double life they lead. “I took a shower, went to sleep for a few hours, woke up, had a great breakfast and went back to work,” he said, back at the office by 4pm.

“It’s a complicated transition but you learn how to do it as you go by. One minute you’re shooting down drones somewhere in the Middle East, risking your life, barely making it, with this huge responsibility on missions important for the entire country and people, then you go back to your day-to-day chores, you get the kids ready for school, take them to daycare, people harass you at work with their tasks which are important, but you have to get used to that diving in and out of that operational world,” he said.

In the last six months of war, triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct 7, there have been many aerial missions but none as significant – or dangerous – as this.

“Here it was a whole battlefield, you see the ballistic missiles in the sky getting blown up, the fireballs as a target gets blown up, you’re flying low altitude at night, then when you fire your own missile blowing up that target right on your nose, that’s a pretty incredible frame to look at,” he recalled.