Maj. Ro'i Klein, 31, was deputy commander of Battalion 51 of the famed Golani Brigades. He jumped on a grenade in order to save his men.
"First he said the ‘Shema' prayer and then he jumped on a grenade," a family friend from his hometown in Israel told the Jerusalem Post.
"That's why some of the soldiers who were with him survived." On Tuesday, Israel troops secured the outskirts of the Lebanese town, which the Israeli high command has called the "capital of Hezbollah." It was in Bint Jbeil in 2000 that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a victory speech when Israel withdrew its forces after 18 years of occupying a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
In the predawn hours on Wednesday, Lt. Col. Yaniv Asor, commander of Battalion 51, received the orders to move into the town itself.
At first, the going was easy. Then, at 5 a.m., Hezbollah fighters ambushed the Israelis in a narrow alleyway between houses with a massive wave of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. Eight Israeli soldiers were killed almost instantly.
"For the first three days, there was almost constant firing," said 1st Sgt. Shahar S., 21. "No more than 15 seconds went by between Hezbollah missile launches, rocket-propelled grenades, or gunfire," he told NewsMax while on R&R north of Haifa.
The Israel Defense Force pulled the troops out of Bint Jbeil at half past midnight on Saturday morning, and brought them to a secure location north of Haifa where they could rest and meet their families.
The Israel Defense Force asked NewsMax not to reveal the precise location where the Golani soldiers were now staying, or to publish their family names.
Shahar said that when he and his men first went into Lebanon on Monday, they had planned on an operation lasting 48 to 72 hours.
They brought everything in on their backs for more than 15 kilometers -- food, water, and ammunition -– and wound up staying five and a half days.
"All the houses were abandoned," he said. "The only ones who stayed behind were terrorists."
Shahar and his men took up position in an abandoned house and moved only at night. During the day they waited for the Hezbollah fighters to reveal themselves.
"The first two we saw were carrying [rocket-propelled grenades] directly below the window of the house where we were staying, but couldn't see us. We killed them."
Shahar said it was only this morning, after eating and sleeping at the R&R facility that he realized the effect of the operation in Bint Jbeil. "We killed more than 100 terrorists. Just to be part of that makes everything worth it –- not just the past five and a half days, the not eating and not drinking, but the past two and a half years.
"This was what I was trained to do," he said. "I can't wait to go back in."
Omer, 20, is a private. "You don't have time to feel," he said, when asked what he had felt during the battle. "I know that I have to continue to fight to save my mother, to save my country."
Seeing a British reporter, he said, "Imagine how you would feel in the U.K. if someone was shooting missiles on London? We have to stop the terrorists."
Israeli military commentators have fretted over this new generation of soldiers. Some have suggested that Israel has become soft over the past 25 years, since its last major war, which was also in Lebanon.
But these troops have more than proven on the battlefield that they are a match for the generation who preceded them, many of whom are now serving in reserve units that have been called back to active duty.
"We were face to face," another soldier said, describing his encounter with a Hezbollah fighter during the battle. "It was him or me. That type of thing has never happened to me before."
He shot the Hezbollah fighter at point-blank range.
Dr. Ariel A., 27, is a doctor with the 51st Brigade. He wanted to talk about his friend, Cpl. Asaf Namer, a 27-year-old Australian citizen who moved to Israel several years ago.
Asaf Namer completed his compulsory military service last, but volunteered to rejoin the troops when the current crisis erupted. "Essentially, he volunteered," Ariel said.
"Asaf came here with the values of the Jew who had to serve his country, the land of the Jews," he added.
"He was brave, he was strong. He did what he believed was right." By the time Ariel managed to reach Namer, he had already died of his wounds. "There was nothing I could do for him," he said.
In the underground shelter beneath the main hospital in Nahariya, a coastal city that has been under constant rocket attack for the past two weeks, 22-year old Adam Wolfson is recovering from wounds he received from a Hezbollah rocket.
"I was lucky," Wolfson told NewsMax. "The shrapnel hit between my legs, but only wounded my thighs, nothing else."
Wolfson was with an artillery unit on the Israeli side of the border, shelling Hezbollah positions, when a Hezbollah rocket landed nearby and hit an ammo dump.
His mother, Diana Anderson, 46, of Denver, Colo., was at his side in the hospital. "I have another son who is a paratrooper, as well," she said.
Like Namer, Wolfson completed his compulsory military service last year, and volunteered to rejoin his artillery unit when the fighting began.
"We'll get them," Wolfson said from his hospital bed. "We'll win."