Maya Brown, a 20-year-old young fighter, told the story of the unimaginable heroism of her observation team at the Nahal Oz outpost on October 7th on the program 'Seder Yom' on Channel 2 today (Wednesday).
""We only hear in the announcement that there is a raid procedure. I did a one-year course and after that another 8 months in the operational sectors and they never told me what a raid procedure is, no one knows what a raid procedure is," Maya said.
Brown, who underwent a year of training that included rifleman 05 basic training and then eight months of advanced training, served in a team of four female fighters under the command of Captain Eden Nimri, RN. "We were four female fighters plus Eden. She was our commander for the last four months of training, which means she was our commander for about a year.".
Brown's team arrived at the Nahal Oz outpost on October 4, after it was decided to place them there in place of another team that had gone on holiday. "They tell us it's been a really calm week and everything is quiet and there's nothing special," she says. "Each time Eden would wait for instructions from the headquarters and try to figure out where we were needed, and each time they would tell us, 'For now, there are no missions to give you.'""
Brown says of the morning of October 7: "At 6:30 in the morning we wake up to the noise of booms, the actual shelling of the launches. We leave our room with our weapons and cartridges, without equipment, in our pajamas." They arrived at Migonit along with 30 other soldiers who were stationed at the post that day.
Brown describes the moments of terror when shots began to be heard, getting closer to the outpost: "We stand at these entrances as the front line, all the observers physically behind us so that if we open fire, they won't be in our firing range. We just wait with a bullet in the barrel.
""Suddenly a terrorist entered, bandana, Hamas uniform, beard, eyes full of evil. He entered through the main entrance, we four female fighters opened fire in his direction. He was a little shocked to see girls with weapons. From what we now understand, they didn't expect to see female fighters with weapons in body armor.".
The terrorists threw three grenades into the shelter. "The third grenade landed right next to us, I remember flying back, getting up for a moment, continuing to fire a few bullets, realizing that I was running out of ammunition," she says. "We got out of the shelter because we were in a destruction zone.".
Brown and two other fighters managed to enter one of the rooms, where they discovered they were wounded by shrapnel. "One of the girls is a medic, so we're checking the injuries and trying to figure out what we can do. We're checking how much ammunition we have, each one has 2-3 bullets left.".
Only after about 40 minutes did Maya remember that she had taken her phone with her and that it was in her pajama pocket, and at 8:40 she sent a message to a friend: "I'm literally writing to him, 'Capture Nahal Oz.' I'm asking for evacuation and reinforcements, and that forces need to be brought in.".
After about seven hours of nerve-wracking waiting, while the terrorists did their thing at the outpost and, among other things, threw a grenade near the room where they were hiding, IDF forces arrived to rescue them. "We hear 'Come on, come on,' these are words that can be confusing. At some point we heard 'Ido, turn left,'" she says.
Only when they were rescued from the shelter did the fighters discover the bitter fate of their revered commander: "We pass through the Migonit, shocked, stop next to Eden, take a moment to look at her and say thank you to her and commemorate her in our way. Only then do we realize that she fell in the Migonit.".
Despite her injury, Brown returned to fighting in Gaza in December - and entered Khan Yunis. "That was my sense of victory, getting back into fighting was something that burned in me. It's no longer me in Nahal Oz in my pajamas with one magazine and terrorists surprising us. It's me with full gear on me, and it's basically reversing the balance of power. It gave me back my sense of security and gave me back the feeling that they didn't defeat me.""
Nine female soldiers were murdered in Migonit in Nahal Oz on the same day: Aviv Hajj, Noam Abramovich, Shai Ashram, Hadar Cohen, Noa Price, Shahaf Nissani, Shirat Yam Amar, Sivan Asraf and Lieutenant Eden Nimri.
Shir Biton and Viren Marie Peled were murdered in the soldiers' quarters.
Seven were kidnapped: Noa Marciano was murdered in captivity and her body was returned to Israel, Uri Magidish was returned in a military operation. Daniela Gilboa, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Naama Levy and Liri Elbag were released from Hamas captivity in January 2025.
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