IDF reservist recounts a year of combat, lost friends and wanting the hostages home
Uri Zakai-Or walks Pittsburghers through timeline of service, gifts listeners new insight
At this point in the Israel-Hamas war, millions of people have seen clips of the conflict. Few have spoken to the people in those videos.
On Oct. 1, Uri Zakai-Or, an Israel Defense Forces captain in reserves and tank platoon commander, visited Pittsburgh for a conversation before a small group at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. Zakai-Or, 25, recounted the past year in which he fought on Israel’s southern and northern fronts, served during hostage rescues and evacuations, lost friends — and started school.
Through photographs, videos and anecdotes, Zakai-Or intimately detailed the last year to dispel myths and help listeners understand that “we are all people,” he said.
“This is my private story,” the Tel Aviv resident began.
Born in Israel, Zakai-Or’s childhood included time in Europe and the U.S. After graduating from Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, he completed shnat sherut (a year of service) in Israel.
The gap year program is “all about giving,” he said. “And through giving, you also get a lot.”
Along with working with at-risk youth, founding a running club and completing the Jerusalem Marathon with the adolescents, Zakai-Or lived alongside religious and secular Jews.
By being together, “you understand how to live together, which is a concept I really like and has gotten me to today,” he said.
Following shnat sherut, he enlisted in the Israeli Air Force. But after discovering his place wasn’t in the skies, Zakai-Or returned to the ground, climbed the ranks and became a platoon commander responsible for overseeing four tanks.
In August 2023, he completed his military service. Along with his girlfriend, he traveled to Guatemala and Belize.
On the evening of Oct. 6, he was getting ready for bed when he noticed a phone message — it was already Oct. 7 in Israel and the attacks had begun.
One report indicated that a tank had been overtaken.
“I thought it was fake news,” he said. “This is my Merkava Mark IV tank, one of the best tanks in the world.”
As a platoon commander, Zakai-Or said he knew “every inch, every screw, everything” involving the armored vehicle, and questioned how it could be “beaten by a bunch of guerrilla terrorists.”
But after hours of scouring sites and sources, “I understood it wasn’t fake; it was real.”
Then a deeper pain set in: Zakai-Or learned that the tank’s commanding officer was Omer Neutra, a Long Island resident, who Zakai-Or trained — Neutra, 22, is among 101 hostages still in Gaza.
Zakai-Or and his girlfriend, a fellow IDF reservist, wanted to immediately return to Israel.
“This is where I understood what great power the Jewish Diaspora has,” he said.
“I saw this post on Instagram that said that whoever needs a flight to Israel, come to JFK tomorrow at 8 p.m. and we’ll handle it,” he said.
Zakai-Or reached out, traveled to New York, “and literally, people were waiting for me there.”
He shared his name and rank.
“They told me, ‘You’re going on,’” he said. But before boarding the AC-130, Zakai-Or was handed a suitcase filled with “batteries and food and clothes and whatever. Like I couldn’t fit all the donations.”
War-life balance
After returning to Israel, Zakai spent several nights sleeping at home before joining his unit, which was already stationed up north.
For months, the Israeli and his team followed a similar pattern. After finishing fighting around 7 p.m., the soldiers blocked out their residences’ windows and began studying. Several of the unit’s members are engineering students, Zakai-Or said.
A photograph of the scene — which included several military-clad individuals cramped around a table with laptops — elicited laughter, as did Zakai-Or’s comment that the environment was sort of like a WeWork.
War, both in the north and south — where Zakai-Or was among the group that ssecured the June rescue of Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv — was challenging, he said. More difficult was “coming back home.”
“A lot of you, probably more than me, have led projects and been in charge of people,” he told attendees. “When you’re leading something, you think only of succeeding. Succeeding as a platoon commander means your people come back home, you succeed with your objective, and you destroy your enemies. And that’s all I thought about for 124 days — mostly what I thought about.”
Coming home presented a “new reality,” he continued. “Every time I left home from reserve service in the first 124 days, I just blocked out my friends that died, and the hostages, and everything, because I needed a breath of fresh air.”
It was only after completing prolonged military service, returning to civilian life and beginning engineering school that he finally “understood that Omer was actually a hostage.”
That realization, coupled by the weight of other losses, largely prompted Zakai-Or to share his tale.
“When you look at it, and you look at my story, and you understand the amount of people I’ve lost, and my friends who are hostages, you understand that I am also going through — and the Israelis are going through — a humanitarian crisis,” he said. “The hostage deal has been made into a political matter, and it’s a humanitarian matter.”
Before coming to Pittsburgh, Zakai-Or spoke at Boston University and George Washington University. He’s received no compensation for his talks other than money for flights, he said.
“I want people to understand that meeting an IDF soldier does not mean anything about my political opinions or my thirst to do anything else other than just to protect my country,” he said.
“I’m a person, and I would like my people home, and I would like to live my life in peace. But when I’m not allowed to live my life in peace, then I must act and must take responsibility.”
The Tel Aviv resident, who’s returning to Israel next week, wants people to appreciate that “Zionism and liberalism have many shared values,” and that those economic and social beliefs held by Israel’s “liberal majority” align closely with “American values today.”
Throughout his talk, Zakai-Or stressed that he’s just one of thousands who have had deeply personal experiences during the past year.
Processing the pain
Speaking for himself, when asked about the hostages, Zakai-Or said, “I don’t know what the motives are…I don’t have facts behind why the hostage deals did or didn’t happen. But what’s most important to remember is that we have governments.” The American government is “in charge of seven hostages that haven’t been returned,” while the Israeli government is responsible for not only those seven, but for the entire group of 101 hostages held in Gaza.
He said that those beliefs led him to a new space: After completing military service, he joined a demonstration in Israel to bring the hostages home.
Zakai-Or shared an image from the gathering. In it, he’s holding a photo of Neutra.
The demonstration may have been one of the hardest points of war, he said.
“Of course Hamas is to blame, and they are ruthless terrorist killers, but I am an Israeli citizen, and my prime minister is only one person, and that’s why I felt comfortable to finish my reserve service and go out and rally and ask for the hostages to return — not because I’m interested in elections, not because I’m interested in some political matter,” he said. “I’m interested in my friends coming home. They sacrificed their freedom, so we can be here. I encourage us all to make sure nobody forgets that they are there, including our enemies, and including the people who are hypocritical, including the U.N. and the Red Cross, and of course our leaders.”
The war in Lebanon is generating new attention, but the hostages’ plight must be remembered, he continued.
“We as a public have the responsibility to make sure that they don’t get off our radar or off our interest,” he said. “Once, and if, a deal comes again, then we should put all our efforts to make sure that our voice is heard, that the deal should be sealed.”
South Hills resident Charlene Tissenbaum praised Zakai-Or’s ability to introduce Pittsburghers to “the reality of what’s going on in Israel and how complicated it is, both on an emotional level and on a military level.”
North Hills resident Jason Kikel also commended Zakai-Or for gifting listeners’ greater insight.
“It’s one thing to see just photos, or tweets, or Reddit comments or snippets, but it’s another to hear somebody go through a timeline of ‘this was my service,’” he said. “I think that more people on whatever side of the issue, wherever that is politically, need to hear this. It’s just really eye-opening, and it’s exhausting at the same time.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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