Here’s an older man who was shot by Palestinian terrorists as he sat alone in a chair in his living room.  That may not sound so heroic, but the kicker is that he sent his wife, daughters, and grandson to the safe room and then intentionally stayed in the living room, sitting there, doing nothing.

“He figured that when terrorists break in they would see him, execute the lonely old man, and move on.  He was right.“

And when other terrorists passed by, they would have seen him dead in the chair.  Nobody to kill here, move along.  Just heartbreaking.  And heartening!

Here’s Google’s translation of the story from YNet — please remember that this is a mechanical translation, and if something doesn’t make sense, assume that’s the issue:

Shlomo Ron (85), one of the founders of Nahal Oz who was murdered in the Hamas attack on the kibbutz, was laid to rest yesterday (Thursday) in the cemetery in Kibbutz Kinneret. Shlomo saved his wife, his two daughters, and his grandson who were staying in the nearby Mmad, and paid with his life. Shlomo was among the members of the first core that founded Nahal Oz, in his teens. His wife, Hana’la, came from Kinneret to help establish the kibbutz and that’s where they met, married and were born They have three children.

Irit Shamir-Bartz, Shlomo’s niece, told Ynet that on the morning of the massacre, their two daughters and grandson were present at the kibbutz. “The girls came because Shlomo was supposed to undergo surgery on Sunday. His grandson is a lone soldier in Israel – his mother lives in England and he came here to enlist, because of his grandfather, because of his close relationship with Shlomo. In Nahal Oz, they gave him an apartment next to his grandparents’ apartment So the two daughters and the grandson were in this apartment and this is probably also one of the things that saved them, because no one entered it. They were in the room of the second apartment, which was not locked.

“The most important thing in his life was Han’la and the family, he loved her with infinite love and he kept her,” added Shamir-Bartz. “On the morning of the incident, I was in contact with them from 9:30, as soon as I heard about what was happening. At the very beginning, my cousin wrote to me that ‘father was shot.’ He was sitting in the living room, an old man, and they saw him and the apartment was empty, a man alone sitting in his armchair, They just shot him and he stayed sitting, the whole time they saw that someone was dead there and didn’t go in. He just saved them, and I’m sure he did it with full awareness, ‘Hannah, hide, I’m watching over you’. That’s how his mind worked.

“I don’t know if they heard from the medical center what happened, but according to what the nurse says, he told them to enter the medical center and insisted on staying outside. They tried to argue with him and call him and he didn’t agree, they knew he wouldn’t agree. The way she closed the door of MMD, she had time to see that someone from the display case shot my uncle, into the living room. She saw it and closed the door of the medical center with a bolt,” she described. “They were quietly waiting for them to come rescue them, and corresponded with the girls and the grandson in the MMD in the other apartment,” she said. We didn’t know what we know today, we tried to arrange supplies for them, we didn’t realize that there was a terrible danger there.”

Shamir-Bartz said that Hanahla was a kindergarten teacher on the kibbutz and Shlomo worked in a locksmith’s shop, “but both were very cultured people. Shlomo was an actor on the kibbutz stage and a singer, in recent years he started painting, and Hanahla sculpts and decorates and paints. Despite the very charged and dangerous place they lived in, They were never people who brandished a gun. They guarded the kibbutz and guarded the border because the border of the kibbutz was the border of the state. Even when they had small children and in the years when things started with Gaza, they never left. They always stayed.”

According to her, “Shlomo was buried in the Kinneret because Han’la came from there and the kibbutz immediately offered her an apartment in the kibbutz and a share in the cemetery. Now she is in the Kinneret, and so is he. Shlomo was a man of peace, of life and softness and beauty. He was not eager for battle, not one of the people who go with The gun is visible on the stomach and it is being waved. This was the population of these kibbutzim in the end, and all the talk in recent years about the kibbutzim is another wound and trauma for this entire population. In the end, they were left without weapons and had to protect their bodies from the bullets.”

He bought the lives of people for generations below, and their descendants as well.  Pretty good trade.  I would like to think of him in Heaven sneering (in a Heavenly way) at the terrorists, “Joke’s on you, losers — I didn’t have long to live anyway!  Hahaha!”

The tweet:

This is Shlomo Ron. When Hamas terrorists invaded his home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, this 85-year-old frail man had a plan.

He left his wife, daughters and grandson in the shelter, and went to sit in his living room, waiting for his death. He figured that when terrorists break in… pic.twitter.com/E9WX0q7nb3

— Yael Bar tur (@yaelbt) October 21, 2023