On October 7, 2023, 120 lives were saved by their neighbors, Eyad and Nasreen Yousef, an Arab Druze couple living in the predominantly Jewish farming village Yated near the Gaza border.
Eyad, a sergeant major and 20-year Israeli army veteran, joined the security team of Yated that morning and, despite his leg being in a cast, captured a Hamas terrorist. His wife Nasreen, 46, who had been hiding in their safe room with their four children, confronted the terrorist in her native Arabic. She convinced him she was on his side, and he revealed where dozens more terrorists were entering through the border fence.
Nasreen Yousef, filmed by her daughter Shiran, 13, talking to Hamas terrorists near the yard of her home in Yated, close to the southern border of Gaza, October 7, 2023.
With that detail, Eyad seized more terrorists hiding in the greenhouse, and his wife tied them up. Eventually, one of the terrorists’ phones rang and Nasreen answered, tricking the man on the other end of the call. He told her where still other terrorists would be coming from, adding, “Inshallah [if it is Allah’s will], tonight we’ll conquer Israel.”
She recalled feeling sick after the phone call and told an Israeli soldier, “Even in my worst dream, I never thought I’d have a conversation with a Hamas member.”
Nasreen told reporters she had no idea how she stayed calm: “As my husband got dressed that morning, he said, ‘It would be an honor to die in uniform, not in a protected room.’ I knew they’d kill us. I had to protect my home.” Eyad and his squad held the Hamas terrorists until the army arrived.
The Gazan terrorists murdered over three hundred Arab Israelis on October 7 because they worked among Jews.
The Yousef’s are two heroes among thousands of Arab Druze who serve bravely in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).