Ofer Varfel

In these very moments, Ofer can be found in the middle of a jeep tour in South Africa, together with two of his best friends from the army. Sounds pretty ordinary, doesn’t it? Ofer was declared to be paralyzed 100+ percent from the waist down after being injured while protecting his teammates in Nablus in July 2004.

Ofer, much like his friends on the trip, does not understand what the ‘big deal’ is: “To me, the disability is very slight” he says “I admit, before the injury, I said that I would rather die than be disabled. Now I am disabled, I want to live and I’m having the time of my life. I enjoy going to bars and seeing girls, like any regular Joe”. Ofer was injured on the night between the 6th and 7th of July 2004. “As we entered Nablus, someone from the house next to the target house recognized us so we kept driving. Eventually we stopped the cars and all 18 of us got out. My crew was the first to reach the target house where four terrorists were hiding, two of them responsible for the murders of eight Israelis”

“As we passed under the window sill, I told my commander that I have to change my position because where I was standing would allow the terrorists to escape. As the assault on the house began, I saw a terrorist running and shooting at us with a 9 mm gun so I started shooting back. When he reached me, I was already kneeling, my legs folded under me because of the bullet that hit me. I don’t even remember how I fell, only that when I started shooting back, I was laying down. At first he stood upright and it looked like my bullets were the only thing holding him up, then he fell on my legs”.

Ofer explains his condition very clearly: “The bullet is lodged between my vertebras, between number 11 and 12, right at the naval, so there is no chance of rehabilitation. It is disheartening to know that once you were in the marines, you were an athlete, and today everyone kind of looks down at you”. For Ofer, the rehabilitation process was a new kind of physical and emotional struggle. “At first I saw getting off the bed, getting on another bed, getting off the chair to the floor, as a big undertaking. Today I do everything”. Before his trip to South Africa, Ofer joined the wheelchair basketball team, whose members are a mix of Tzahal Disabled, Terror victims, and traffic accident victims. This sort of activity at ‘Beit Halochem’ has been very helpful in his physical and spiritual rehabilitation.

Why did you decide to join the ‘Beit Halochem’ basketball team?

“People kept telling me to come to ‘Beit Halochem’ to play basketball. I didn’t really want to but my friends persisted, so I said to myself: if everyone says it is fun, it’s probably worth a try. I came, I tried, and I saw that it really was fun and challenging. Today I am on the team, playing defense; I give people playing against me a hard time”. Ofer also spends his time working out in the gym and swimming at the pool of ‘Beit Halochem’. He says, being a former marine, that this can be looked at as an improvement from his previous swimming conditions: “Before, I dove into cold water in the middle of the night, today I go in at the middle of the day, into nice warm water. I come in, do a few laps; I still swim faster than some people who are not disabled. The only problem is my legs, I feel like they are pulling me down, but I’m working on it”.

What does all this activity give you?

“I looked for a place to take out some energy; as a disabled person it is difficult sitting in a wheelchair all day, the activity at ‘Beit Halochem’ turned out to be just what I was looking for”