Two IDF lone soldiers, Eli Wininger and Isaac Lutbak, recounted their experiences on the front line in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank as well as on a second battlefield in the advocacy war on college campuses. An appreciative audience filled the multipurpose room at the Asper Campus on April 2, 2025 to hear their talk, which was sponsored by University of Manitoba chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI), entitled “Triggered: From Combat to Campus—The Tour.”
Both Wininger and Lutbak expressed how they felt obliged to leave their homes in the US after October 7 and go fight for Israel, and then, armed with the truth gained firsthand on the battlefield, return to the maybe even more important war at home on college campuses. Though Lutbak was confident Israel will win the war in Gaza, there being “no other option,” he spoke of the critical need to win the advocacy war. Success in fighting this “tougher war” requires education and, most importantly, Jewish pride, according to Lutbak. He praised “the power” exhibited in the room, especially in the largely young people in attendance (but the adults as well) concerned with learning the truth about the first war and how to do battle in the second.
Anti-Israel protesters [who never criticize Hamas] rallied on the street outside the Asper campus for over an hour to “Stop War Criminals [Wininger and Lutbak] from Speaking in Winnipeg.” They shouted “All Zionists are racists,” even though Zionism is defined as the right of the Jewish people to self-determination—meaning they want to dismantle Israel as a state in the region. Lutbak—one of the targets of the protesters’ fury, though unknown to them—strolled proudly through the crowd of pro-Israel supporters who confronted and outnumbered the anti-Israel protesters by more than half. As he later quipped, this is what gives him “a fire in his belly,” inspiration to tell the truth.
Wininger was at university when the 2014 Gaza war broke out, and that was when he realized “activism was not enough”; he wanted to be on the front lines. After graduating, he went to Israel and served for 3 ½ years in special operations as a commander in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, returning to the US to work as a health coach. When he “opened his phone on October 7 and heard the news from Israel, he texted his officer and was on a plane the next day and on the Lebanese border a day later,” where he served for 2 months before going into Gaza.
The mission that was particularly alarming for him was when he was in a top-secret unit tasked with monitoring a building in an area that was in a war zone; no civilians had been allowed there for over a month. When they got notice of cell phone activity in the building, they were 100% sure it was a Hamas operative; yet, they did not get permission to fire. The next morning, they conducted an operation to clear the building and discovered a family on the fourth floor. “Thank God, we didn’t shoot.” The father was taken to field intelligence and was proven to be a Hamas terrorist who took part in the October 7 massacre. For Wininger, this was “a huge sign of how moral the IDF is”; despite clear evidence, the army did not want even a slight chance a civilian might be hurt.
On October 7, Lutbak was in LA, and like Wininger, returned to Israel on Oct. 8, rejoining his group on Oct. 9 to be shipped on Oct. 10 to the north. In December, he was sent south as a paratrooper in the 101st battalion, just before the first ceasefire and hostage release. His first real situation was dealing with sniper fire from a mosque (showing Hamas does use mosques, like schools and hospitals, to launch attacks and as military depots). While going through the streets, a 60-year-old woman appeared. Though they did not see a weapon, and the area had been cleared, so she was clearly Hamas or Hamas-adjacent, they did not shoot to kill but to the right. She ran away. Another opportunity sacrificed to avoid civilian harm.
Lutbak recalled how he and his friend were watching a building for Hamas activity when a woman came across the street with her daughter, on a road no one was to be on, going toward the building. His friend didn’t kill her as he couldn’t. When they entered the building that she had entered and left safely, they found a remote-operated improvised explosive device (IED). Fortunately, she had not connected it properly. Had she done so, the team would have all been killed in the explosion.
This is “the terrible grey area in which the IDF is forced to make decisions. Not one Hamas operative wears a uniform. Bodies of Hamas operatives are found with maps, guns, and grenades, but dressed in jeans and adidas. Every person we killed was Hamas. There is intelligence in every house we go through—guns, bullet-proof vests, ID.” Therefore, Lutbak said, “I feel 1000% in my heart that the IDF is way more moral than I thought.”
In another mission, the most elite unit of the Israeli Air Force was searching for Hamas’ largest military compound in an alley way between an elementary and middle school. The truth of tunnels being built under schools (or schools being built over tunnel openings) “is spot on” said Wininger. The tunnel built under the UNRWA schools housed one of the largest Hamas intelligence centres, and a search of the schools revealed a huge stack of copies of Mein Kampf in the library, the educational tool for poisoning the minds of Palestinian children with hate.
While searching a pink bedroom in a house also built over a tunnel, they found rocket launchers under a bed with pink sheets and a doll on it. Another myth that the IDF indiscriminately attacks civilians is exploded. When almost every home stores weapons, missiles, and rocket launchers, the IDF is continually faced with choiceless choices, usually choosing to forgo operations rather than risk civilian lives while Hamas deliberately puts its own civilians’ lives in jeopardy.
When Wininger came out of Gaza and returned home, he was attacked online for his war service, being called “all horrible things possible.” He realized the truth had to get out to counter the proliferation of misinformation. For 6 months, he travelled the world with photos and power point presentations in pursuit of this new mission. He ran a 240- plus 11-mile race, a mile for every hostage, and the LA marathon in a batman suit in honour of Ariel Bibas. Though he found his “highest purpose” on the front line in Gaza, he believes this new battleground fighting for SSI is indispensable.
Lutbak agreed. “We really need to educate ourselves” to fight this “tougher war.”
Lutbak noted he went on a Birthright Israel mission in 2014. The Gush Etzion kidnapping and murder of three teenage Yeshivah students in June of that year was for him his “9/11 moment.” He joined the army, voluntarily drafting and serving as a reservist. (When one young man later asked about drafting, Lutbak pretended to make a call: “Hello, Bibi, we’ve got another one!”). Lutbak described feeling “guilty” having to go into Gutz Etzion to arrest a teenage boy who had thrown a Molotov cocktail. In strict adherence to Ruach Tzahal, the IDF Code of Ethics, every life is held sacred by the soldiers, as opposed to the terrorists’ love of death. Before every mission, soldiers are told: “Remember your values. Remember your family. Don’t go in with hatred. Go in as a good person and with pride as a soldier.”
Boaz Greenfield, president of SSI, gave introductory remarks, speaking of SSI’s mission—"to be a clear and confident pro-Israel voice on college campuses”—and the critical need to “dispel the lies” about Israel that presently pervade academia. Wininger and Lutbak spoke with emotion and humour for over two hours. Lutbak finally had to call for an “overtime” for further questions.
Malachi Goertzen, outreach manager, introduced Wininger and Lutbak.
Eli Wininger and Isaac Lutbak are ideal spokespersons for the vital task of advocating for Israel, exhibiting honesty, courage, and pride. They are exemplars of what Douglas Murray admires most about Israeli soldiers:
Of all the Israeli soldiers I met, none took delight in their task. They could feel victorious on occasion, proud to have completed a mission and gotten their unit out alive. But from the south of Gaza to the south of Lebanon and the West Bank, none took pleasure in the task they had to do. They did it not because they loved death but exactly because they love life. They fought for life. For the survival of their families, their nation, and their people.
—excerpt from the forthcoming On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization by Douglas Murray, published in The Free Press, April 2, 2025
