Published: 23 August 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
What happened in the final moments of the Second Lebanon War haunts Brigadier-General Effie Defrin day and night. He speaks candidly about it
Last Friday, August 12, Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin marked what he calls, with a degree of irony, “the anniversary of my death.” On the afternoon of that day 16 years ago, Defrin was the commander of the 9th Battalion of the Israel Defence Force’s 401st Armoured Brigade.
When the brigade started to cross Wadi Saluki, in what would become probably the best-known and least necessary battle of the Second Lebanon War, Defrin’s battalion was attacked with antitank missiles in a Hezbollah ambush. He was wounded seriously and was evacuated while ventilated and in an induced coma.
Initially, his condition was classified as critical. His wife, Carmel, was called to the hospital, with the thought that she would have to part from him.
But Defrin recovered exceptionally quickly, surprising his doctors, and within a few weeks was back at the helm of his battalion – which, like him, had emerged from the war battered and bruised.
For the past three years, he has headed the army’s International Cooperation Division, which, notwithstanding its rather innocuous name (which will soon be changed), is in charge of coordinating collaborative efforts between the IDF and dozens of foreign armies, and also nurtures some of Israel’s sensitive security ties.
In official army photographs, Defrin, in dress uniform, is always smiling. That’s also the face known to his many liaisons in armies of friendly countries. But since the battle of Wadi Saluki, he has nonetheless carried with him an experience that only in recent years was diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder.
FULL STORY Many Israeli generals have PTSD, but this confession is unprecedented (Haaretz)
Photo: Brigadier General Effie Defrin (Tomer Appelbaum)
