Why Did Chief Of Staff Zamir Attend Kfar Chabad Wedding On Day Of Hezbollah Assassination?

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — A surprising personage appeared Sunday night at a wedding hall at the center of Kfar Chabad: IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, wearing a white knitted kippah and surrounded by security guards. Zamir arrived in the midst of a tense and fateful day for the IDF.

He showed up at the charedi wedding shortly after making a public statement on several pressing security matters, and just hours after the successful assassination of Hezbollah’s chief of staff in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, an event which could have regional repercussions in the coming days.

Earlier in the day, Zamir had met with senior officers ahead of imposing personal responsibility on some of them for the failures that led to the October 7 disaster, and then dismissing several of them. Yet even on such a day, he found time to come to Kfar Chabad.

The event was the wedding of Menachem Kirchenzaft from Nitzan, the son of the Chabad emissary in Nitzan, and previously in the Gush Katif settlements, Rabbi Yigal Kirchenzaft

More than twenty years ago, a bond of blood was forged between the charedi family and the man who is now the IDF’s highest-ranking officer. In a terror attack at the entrance to Gush Katif, shortly before the 2005 disengagement, it was Zamir who saved the family’s lives.

The attack occurred when a terrorist opened fire in Gush Katif on the car carrying the Kirchenzaft family. The mother was driving, the father sat beside her, and the children were in the back — one of them an infant.

The terrorist sprayed the car with bullets, trying to murder the entire family. Then Zamir, who was then commander of the 7th Armored Brigade and happened to be nearby, arrived in a jeep and eliminated the terrorist.

The infant who had been sitting in that bullet-riddled car, surrounded by shards of glass, built a home of his own yesterday, and Zamir felt it was important to be there in person, to witness the miracle with his own eyes.

In a short speech to the crowd, he said: “I’ve had many encounters with terrorists, but this was a miracle from Heaven. The entire vehicle was riddled with bullets, with the whole family, including the baby, who is the groom today, inside, and not a single one was harmed. So that today we merit to take part in Menachem’s wedding.”

Zamir and the Kirchenzaft family have maintained a relationship ever since. He visited their home after the attack, and they became very close. When the father was injured before the disengagement, Zamir came to visit him at home, and on the day of the disengagement he came again to try to help. Last night, the circle was completed.