‘I wished it would be me’: Las Vegas father describes his longest journey

It was the longest drive of Ben Perry’s life — one no father would want to take.

Hours after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists, the Las Vegas resident was taking his son, Yuval Perry, and son-in-law Benji Diechter to a command post near the Lebanese border. Yuval and Benji, reservists in the same reconnaissance unit of the Israel Defense Forces, had been summoned to the front lines of the war.

“I drove them to their post about 2½ hours from Tel Aviv. It was hard to register the extent of the horrors we had just seen,” said Perry, who along with his wife, Michal, also have a home in Israel. “The thought of the battle we are now in and have to win at all costs was overwhelming.”

Born in the United States, Perry was just 7 when his American father moved the family to Israel. Upon reaching age 18, he entered the IDF and served three years as a paratrooper, and the ensuing 25 years as a reservist. His father was a soldier in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, then was a volunteer soldier in the Israeli Air Force during the Israeli War of Independence.

Now the father of an IDF soldier himself, Perry recalled how he felt upon arriving at the command post.

“I wished it would be me. I’m 70 years old, but if I was suitable, it would be me,” he said in an interview. “I fought in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Lebanese War in 1982, but this war is different. We are fighting for our existence.”

Unsettling awakening

The morning of the attacks, Perry and his wife, who travel between their homes in Las Vegas and Tel Aviv, were awakened by air raid sirens and immediately headed into their safe room. They turned on the TV as rockets showered from the sky.

“It was unusual because it was pretty quiet for weeks before — there had been no signs, nothing,” he said. “Slowly we realized it was an attack with missiles being fired all over the country. Then all kinds of photos and videos began showing what was going on in the south near the Gaza border. People from there are frantically calling the television station and telling of things that are happening, and immediately everyone is calling everyone else, ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Are you OK?’ ”

When the sound of missiles subsided, the two left the sealed room.

“Everyone was recycling the breaking and rolling news, and eventually we started to learn the scope of the attack,” Perry said. “A lot of information came from the Hamas terrorists themselves as they were attacking because they were filming everything and sending it back to Gaza, where they were posting what they were doing. So at the same time you look at Facebook or TikTok, Instagram and you see live from the other side what’s going on. … Horrendous pictures and the loud, horrible kidnapping of soldiers. … With the shock of seeing the magnitude of what was happening, we knew this was major.”

Soon after, Yuval, his sister Gilly and her husband, Benji Diechter, joined the couple at their Tel Aviv home.

A few hours later a major alert went out calling for about 350,000 army reservists to report. That’s when Yuval, an officer in a reconnaissance unit, and Benji got the call.

‘That’s where I belong’

Perry, who owns a Las Vegas real estate brokerage and property management business, and his wife returned to the United States in 2000 and settled in Las Vegas to raise their children, then 6 and 4.

When Yuval was in his sophomore year at Coronado High School, he had an epiphany.

“I just woke up and made the decision,” Yuval recalled. “I know what my purpose is. I know what I want to do, and I know that in my heart my place is in Israel and that’s where I belong.”

At age 18, he returned to Israel and enlisted in the IDF. When the war broke out in October, Yuval had already completed his regular army duty and was an officer in the reserves.

Now 26, Yuval shared how he felt upon his arrival at the command post. “As an officer I had to come before the rest of the soldiers to get everything set up along with the other officers there,” he said. At least an hour remained before the soldiers were to show up that day, giving him “time to come to my senses and gather my thoughts.”

“That hour was both tragic and strengthening because that’s when I was starting to find out about a lot of friends and people I know who were already killed,” Yuval said. “It was strengthening because it gave me much more reason to understand exactly why I’m here, and very quickly I was able to get into the state of mind of war.”

Across Israel, people have been mobilized in one way or another. Many serve at the front in uniforms, others volunteer at vacated farms and orchards, factories, stores and restaurants, and still more provide homes for those forced to evacuate theirs — 80,000 plus on the northern front and an untold number who lost their homes in the kibbutzim and towns and cities in the south.

More than five months in, the war continues to be part of daily life in Israel, with its uncertainty and danger. But there is hope and determination to win the war and bring the hostages home.

Marcia Friedman is an artist and freelance writer based in Las Vegas. She may reached at www.marciafriedman.com.