Lawler, Mast meet with ‘lone’ IDF soldier who ‘changed course of history’

Chaim Meisels was in Washington, D.C., as part of Nevut, which supports 10,000 lone Israel Defense Forces soldiers after their service in combat, so he sought a meeting with his congressman, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.).

A U.S. citizen who served as a “lone soldier” (one without family in Israel) for six years, Meisels was part of the unit that eliminated former Hamas senior leader Yahya Sinwar on Oct. 16. He wanted to sit down with Lawler, because the congressman is a stalwart supporter of the Jewish state and of Israeli soldiers like him, Meisels told JNS.

Lawler was amenable to a meeting, and when Meisels asked if anyone else ought to join, the congressman suggested Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), given the latter’s military service and support for the Jewish state. (Mast is the only member of Congress to have donned both U.S. and Israeli military uniforms.)

On Wednesday, Meisels met both congressmen, and he and Mast bonded over their shared military service and talked “veteran to veteran,” he told JNS.

“Brian was very good at that, saying that he thinks a lot of the guys, who come back from war and do great things after they come back,” Meisels told JNS.

“Chaim Meisels is a hero, and I’m honored to count him among my constituents,” Lawler told JNS. “His and his unit’s work to eliminate Yayha Sinwar was critical in bringing us to the verge of a ceasefire agreement and mitigating the threat posed by Hamas.”

“I’m grateful for his service and commitment to ensuring the safety and well-being of the United States and the State of Israel,” the congressman added.

‘Quite a few tours’

Before Meisels had fully grasped the enormity of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel, the IDF veteran was already at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York ready to board the first flight to Israel.

“Only when I landed in Israel, I realized what actually happened,” he told the Daily Wire. “I knew it was very bad, but I didn’t know how bad it was.”

He told JNS that he did “quite a few tours” and that there were “a lot of days fighting in Gaza.”

The one about which most people want to hear was when his unit killed Sinwar.

In December, Meisels made news when he shared that donations, which came in after he appeared at a Teaneck, N.J., synagogue, were used to purchase a drone that first identified a group of terrorists in Gaza which included Sinwar.

“Jews in America pitched in and donated, so we could do our job,” he told Daily Wire.

The donated drones, which had thermal imaging, were the reason Meisel’s unit, the 828th Bislamach Brigade, was able to pinpoint Sinwar’s location.

The Israeli military killed Sinwar after a drone spotted a group of terrorists moving between buildings. Because of its thermal imaging capability, the drone could locate the terrorists, which led to a firefight that caused the latter to scatter.

Sinwar fled alone into another building, where he was ultimately killed. Meisels and his fellow soldiers thus “changed the course of history,” the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated.