On Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded the communities and towns on the Gaza periphery, one of the epicenters of fighting that day was the town of Sderot.
The images of Hamas terrorists entering the town as they brandished their weapons were a portent of the carnage to follow.
The Sderot Police Station would become the scene of a battle that will be remembered for the courage of the police officers who fought so bravely that day.
The station was the heart of the town’s community, and many who visited from elsewhere would often stop there to view the “museum” of spent rockets launched from the Gaza Strip a few miles away.
Sderot police officer Eliyahu Harush would be the first officer to fall in the epic battle.
His widow, Hodaya, is also a police officer. She is ultra-Orthodox and continues to serve in the Israel Police—not only out of her sense of duty to her country, but to honor the memory of Eliyahu and all her colleagues who fell that day.
“If I had the slightest bit of information about what was to come, I would never have let him go,” she told JNS. A mother of three, she now serves as an investigator at the police station in the town of Netivot, about eight miles south of Sderot.
Eliyahu dropped Hodaya and their three girls off at her father’s house in Petah Tikvah, in central Israel, on the Thursday before he started his shift at the police station. He was going to collect them after Shabbat.
They communicated via WhatsApp for the next two days and one of the last messages Hodaya received from Eliyahu was a sticker with the message, “Keep an eye out for children who don’t have a family.”
Saturday morning started with sirens and rocket fire. The news came in that Sderot police station had been taken over by Hamas terrorists. The day passed without any word from Eliyahu, or his whereabouts.
“On that Saturday, I didn’t know exactly what was happening, and that uncertainty is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” she said.
In the early hours of the next morning, police officers finally arrived and told her that Eliyahu had been killed. Hodaya broke down, devastated. At 26, she was now a widow with three small children. She had to find her strength for them. Two weeks later, she returned to work.
“Even before they buried my Eliyahu, they came to me from the National Police Academy; I was still in training. They came to me and said, ‘If you don’t want to continue with the course, just tell us,’” she related.
Hodaya answered with an emphatic no.
“The first thing I said to them, without hesitation, was that it was Eliyahu who sent my resume. I told them, this was Eliyahu’s will. Eliyahu made sure that I joined the Israel Police and I am going to do everything possible to serve as a police officer,” said Hodaya.
Hodaya specifically wants to help women in the ultra-Orthodox community. “As Haredim in the police force, our goal is to reach crime victims who were very difficult to approach in the past.
“It’s truly a breakthrough for the Haredi community when a Haredi woman approaches us and sees a policewoman with a head covering, or a Haredi man approaches us and sees a Haredi policeman with a beard,” she said.
“There’s openness between us, and there are things that only we understand about each other. I also see it in the field. There is a significant breakthrough between the Haredi sector and the police, and it’s great,” she added.
At her husband’s funeral, two officers told her that they were still alive because of Eliyahu.
Hodaya later found out what happened that morning. Eliyahu had been on duty with another officer when they received a call that there had been an infiltration at the nearby Zikim beach. They were unaware that terrorists were already in Sderot.
Eliyahu ran out, drawing fire as other officers ran to the roof, where they were eventually saved. Eliyahu was the first to engage the terrorists and the first to fall. He saved the lives of his colleagues who managed to get to safety.
Twenty police officers fell in the battle of Sderot.
Hodaya’s father Roni was killed on Sept. 1, when terrorists opened fire on a car in which he was traveling with two other officers.
Hodaya has started a campaign to dedicate a Sefer Torah in Eliyahu’s name: https://my.israelgives.org/en/fundme/Harush
