D9 operators: The humble heroes of Israel’s urban warfare, Part 1

ANJULI PANDAVAR | 22 Apr 2025

First to enter, last to leave

Editorial note: On 22 January 2025, Murtadd to Human published Herzi Halevi, the top brass and the “Palestinian state” agenda, Part 1 and Herzi Halevi, the top brass and the “Palestinian state” agenda, Part 2, in which we examined the military leadership’s deliberate and systematic degradation of the IDF as a fighting force and their headlong rush to dismantle the ground forces in particular. A fitting compliment to this essay has now emerged, in the form of the Doron Keidar Podcast interview with an IDF D9 combat bulldozer operator, Efraim Abrams, a soldier at the receiving end of the top brass’s wrecking frenzy, and the first to enter Gaza in the current war.There have been many “straight from the horse’s mouth” accounts of the war in Gaza, but none as moving, humbling and eye-opening as Abrams’s, told from the perspective, both literally and figuratively, of a D9 operator. We owe a debt of gratitude to Doron Keidar for bringing Abrams to us and for so sensitively allowing him to open up. We bring to our readers excerpts from that interview, in three parts, and encourage you to gain a fuller picture by also reading the Herzi Halevi essay linked above. Efraim Abrams is a truly remarkable man, to whom we express our heartfelt gratitude, wishes for his speedy recovery and return to that which he loves most, fighting Israel’s enemies with a bulldozer.

Efraim Abrams: Thank you for having me on your show. It’s always an honour to share my testimony. I was born in Long Island, New York. When I was a year old, my family we moved to Israel. After ten years, we moved back to the States and I had my childhood here and there, in Israel and in the US. After graduating high school I made Aliyah. I came back to Israel.

I went to premilitary school, called Keshet, in the Golan Heights. After graduating from my premilitary school, I drafted into the IDF, to the combat engineering corps. About a year and eight months into my service, I was an EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] specialist. After that, I went to commander school where I became a commander and specialized further in landmine disposal—all the fun stuff. If it goes boom, I like it. There was another course within the commander course to become a D9 commander. I thought it was pretty cool, so I became also a D9 commander. After six months of my continuous mandatory service, October 7th broke out and, yeah, that’s where all the fun began. I was on active duty on 7th of October, actually on military leave. I had a week off, just like the whole country. It caught us completely off guard, not to say that I wasn’t expecting at some time something to happen, but it’s definitely caught us off guard.

My whole family is in New York. I came as what you call a ‘lone soldier.’ A lone soldier is someone who comes from abroad to join the IDF without any parents or guardians within the country and that’s exactly what I did. My parents didn’t fully understand what my position was in the IDF and even the majority of Israel didn’t really understand what a D9 was. I also wasn’t going to tell my parents what my position was in the army after we invaded. At some point, they started to learn a little more about what I was doing and that’s when they understood the magnitude of the danger I was in.

When Israel took Jews out of Gaza, I was surrounded by this at a very young age. Then my family moved to another city in Israel, where everyone in our community were high ranking generals in the IDF and all their children were my best friends. I grew up in a very militaristic environment, one that was also very hostile. It was something that from my roots I understood was going to lead me into becoming a combat soldier, and even a commander.

Doron Keidar: Just to be clear for the audience, when we say ‘commander’ here in Israel, we’re talking about an NCO [Non-Commissioned Officer] course. You don’t have ranks up here, you have the ranks down here. It gives you leadership skills so that the military can basically put you over a small group of soldiers or to be in charge of, in your case, a D9.

EA: In the most humble of ways, it’s a very unique position in the military and anyone who’s studied the war here in Israel understands how unique a D9 is on the battlefield. Most people become a commander over just a couple of soldiers and in infantry world, but the D9s leave the infantry world and we go into the armoured vehicle world, which is a whole different world. Also, when you’re in a D9 and you’re sent to do engineering missions, which is 100% of the time when you’re in the engineering part of the battle or the operation, you’re now in charge of the entire operation for the most part. A company commander from infantry he might be in charge of the operation, but when it comes to the tactical part of the battlefield where they need to bring in a D9, then you take over and you essentially are now in charge of so much more than just five people. At such a low rank you have so much more power on the battlefield.

We have a saying: the combat engineering is always first. Every mission, every battle, you will see a combat engineer opening the way, and there’s a reason for that. The enemy, the terrorists, use guerrilla warfare tactics. They’ll use all the infrastructure and all the terrain for their benefit. And how do they do that? Let’s just take an example. They’ll take a road [and put] explosives under the road—civilian roads. They know the IDF will come onto that road and they hope that the explosive will detonate and take out as many soldiers as possible and wound as many as possible. They could ambush the convoy that is coming. And how does the IDF prevent that? That’s where the D9s come in.

First, a D9 is a massive, massive bulldozer. The IDF bought bulldozers from Caterpillar in the United States, brought them to Israel and we Guccified them with armour. We took the whole cabin from the D9 and completely armoured it, [adding] bulletproof glass. We added another seat for a commander in the vehicle and this D9. this bulldozer, we call it a ‘killdozer’. It has a massive bucket [blade] in the front. It ploughs the land and as it’s ploughs, it gets rid of the IEDs that are implanted.

Now it’s such a massive chunk of steel that when it goes over and sets off an IED, most of the time nothing happens. Sometimes it’ll destroy the vehicle and once in a blue moon, sadly, the soldiers will get wounded, but that’s essentially what it is, a massive, massive bulldozer that just eats up explosives and everything and anything.

We stick the bucket about 30cm into the ground and start pushing forward. It’s almost comical, but when you see the vehicle operate in battle, you understand how much power this thing has, and how essential it is on the battlefield. There’s a lot of horsepower, a lot of torque power in this vehicle. In the civilian world, bulldozers are intended to plough land. They’re not intended to destroy infrastructure and demolish buildings. Hamas uses 100% of the infrastructure in Gaza for terrorism and the IDF saw that we could use bulldozers to fight urban warfare. In the D9 we found the perfect tool to destroy infrastructure. And it really does an incredible job. Without infrastructure, buildings and houses, they have no way to fight.

We saw [Yahya] Sinwar hiding in a building. We started destroying all the buildings in Rafah and he had to jump from building to building, because there weren’t any buildings to run into anymore. That’s how we fight terrorists. That’s part of the strategy. We’re not going in to destroy Gaza because we hate everybody and this and that and whatever the media say we go in for. Everything we do in Gaza is done with strategy. I’ve had RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] fired at me from hospital buildings, from school buildings, from children’s rooms. We know that Hamas hides in these buildings and the only way to prevent them from hiding in a building is to destroy it.

We could do what we did in the last Gaza war or, for that matter, in any of the combat theatres in Gaza: we would send infantry troops into the building but many times those infantry men would die, because the buildings were booby trapped. so we also saw that there was no need to actually send in infantrymen. We could just bring D9s and even excavators and [avoid] having to send in troops. It’s probably the vehicle that saved more lives than any other in the war and [avoided] casualties, and mass casualties for that matter, because, apart from destroying buildings, it does such an incredible job detonating explosives in the ground and diffusing them, and that prevents infantry men and tanks getting blown up.

I once had a scenario in Rimal, not too far from Kikar Palestine (Palestine Square) in Gaza City. We were going to battle and were a couple of blocks out. We D9s were the first ones in the battle. We opened up the road and made it to an intersection. They plant explosives in vehicles, so we have to make sure that even the vehicles are destroyed. I was about to run over this vehicle when my D9 partner cut me off and got to the vehicle first. The vehicle blew up and it completely destroyed his D9. We realised that if a D9 is destroyed by an IED, that it was a massive explosion and we were about to get ambushed.

This mission we were being sent on was to go and get the [severed] head of a hostage. They were selling a head on the black market, which was all over the news. This was that very mission. We knew that on this mission we were probably going to have an intense battle. We were ambushed right after the D9 blew up and, sadly, a soldier fell in battle. They fired an RPG from one of the buildings. Now they’re not firing RPGs from military outposts. They’re firing them from civilian homes. Every house, every single piece of infrastructure that is used in Gaza is used to kill Jews. Each and every single house.

I had a very good friend who fell in battle. He was one of my company commanders. We spoke about how every time we were attacked, we wouldn’t even see the actual terrorist from close. We’d have to zoom in with our cameras or whatever technology we had to actually see where they were firing from. When we zoomed in, we’d found they’re dressed like civilians and shooting from the room of their children, or it could even be some random child’s house. It’s not even their home and that’s exactly what we were fighting.

We were with 551 Commando reserves, looking for our tunnel in Beit Hanoun, northeastern Gaza. This was probably the most booby trapped place I’ve ever been to. We were called up on the radio and told there is a log that has explosive material in it. They saw with drone footage the day before that Hamas took a dog on a leash and attached it to the log and put explosives on the log. Why? Because they thought an IDF soldier, who is so innocent and pure and just, will come and untie this poor dog from the log and set it free. They will blow up the IED and the soldiers and the dog will die.

I had to come with my D9 to make sure there weren’t any explosives around, and then we also brought a K9 dog to sniff out explosive material and I’m also an EOD specialist. When we got to the log, I can see the detonator wrapped in tin foil and the cords and the cables that were intended for the explosive. They had taken the explosive off; it wasn’t there in the end, but they left the detonator there. You could actually see how it was all set up. An animal, they’re using an animal. You will never hear that on any mainstream western media. That’s crazy.

Part 2/…

Picture credits:

Screenshot from https://www.thesun.ie/news/11486642/israel-deploys-indestructible-bulldozer-gaza/

Screenshot from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0XOlfOjS78

Long War Journal https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2023/11/israel-has-intercepted-9500-rockets-fired-through-multi-layered-air-defense-system.php

Screenshot from https://www.nairaland.com/7506547/world-news-events-happening-around/507