From the battlefield to the chuppah: Injured soldier proposes to his girlfriend

“It’s in difficult moments like that you realise what’s important in life,” Lior Badani tells Jewish News while recalling why he decided to propose to his girlfriend soon after being wounded in Gaza. 

Lior, 25, was among the roughly 30,000 Israeli soldiers sent to fight Hamas in Gaza following 7 October. But in the weeks leading up to the massacre, Lior and his girlfriend Adi went through a rough time, not knowing if they would stay together.

But 7 October put things into perspective for both. On that horrible morning, they reached out to each other to check if they were safe. Lior was called up by the IDF shortly after, given just a few hours to pack his things before joining the IDF combat engineer corps.

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Lior decided to surprise Adi at her home before he was sent off, something he in hindsight can see was a sign that his doubt about their relationship had already vanished.

In Gaza, Lior and his unit had one of the most difficult and important tasks of the war; clearing the roads for bombs and explosives, as well as locating and destroying tunnels and buildings.

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As most soldiers don’t get to call their loved ones for long periods while in Gaza, Lior found a way to deliver a letter to Adi through a friend who was stationed at a base just outside Gaza.

“It was hard to be away from each other during such a difficult time. I missed her a lot,” he said. Just two weeks after he arrived in Gaza, Lior was badly wounded near Jabalya, a hotbed for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

An anti-tank missile hit the heavily armoured Combat engineering vehicle he was in. “I remember a massive explosion. When I tried to reach my unit on the walkie talkie, I realised the connection had been cut,” Lior said.

He managed to reach the rescue point to get help, only to find out that he had been hit with shrapnel from the missile.

“I asked my friend if he could check and see if everything was okay because I had a weird feeling in my body. He lifted up my shirt and I saw I was bleeding a lot.”

Lior was taken to Beilinson Hospital in Israel shortly after, where he spent the next two weeks in recovery. “I still have shrapnels in my chest from the anti-tank missile,” he said.

Adi came to the hospital to take care of him, and it was then they both realised that they wanted to spend their life together.

“I proposed to her exactly one year after we met, on 17 March. I told her that I had some treatment at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and that I wanted her to come with me. When we arrived at the place where I planned to propose, she was really surprised. I proposed to her at a beautiful lookout, overseeing the valleys of Jerusalem.”

“She was really surprised and excited. The truth is that I didn’t say anything, we just looked at each other, laughed and smiled, sometimes silence speaks more than words. I am really happy I proposed. We are right for each other, sometimes it just takes a catastrophe to realise it,” he said.

Lior and Adi will get married on July 14.