From San Diego to Gaza: Sniper-turned-Cantor Joins the Fight Against Hamas

JERUSALEM, Israel — Hanan Leberman, 37, is a father of two. He is an aspiring opera singer, and a cantor for a synagogue in San Diego, California. He is also a reservist in the special forces of the Israeli military. Today, he is preparing to join his unit in Gaza.

I caught up with Hanan in his family’s apartment on Saturday evening, after the Jewish Sabbath, where he was waiting for his commanding officer to call. Military equipment took up the living room rug, next to children’s toys and stuffed animals.

He had just arrived from the U.S. on Friday afternoon. Hanan said goodbye to his wife and two small children, who went to stay with relatives in Philadelphia. And he is preparing to risk his life to protect Israeli children from being killed by Hamas ever again.

This was not our first meeting: we grew up near each other in Skokie, Illinois and attended the same Jewish day school.

Hanan was inspired to join the military by the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. He could have joined the U.S. military as well, he told me, but felt drawn to Israel after spending a year visiting the country after finishing high school. He joined the special forces in 2008, feeling it was the best way to have the greatest impact, and spent three years as a sniper before leaving in 2011 to pursue his opera career. He has been mobilized for four emergencies since then — each time, fighting Palestinian terrorist organizations.

I asked Hanan how he felt on the eve of his deployment.

“I feel all of the things that one would think you would feel before going into the army and fighting an enemy that is monstrous,” he said. “At the same time, I also feel that I have no choice and that what we’re doing is absolutely the right thing.

“We witnessed children being taken away from their dead parents, as hostages into Gaza. And I’m a person who takes a specific commandment in the Bible very seriously, and that is ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ It’s the most important commandment in the Bible for me,” he continued.

“And I cannot sit and do nothing when I see children being taken by savages. And I have to go and help get them back, and bring them back to their parents, or bring them back to safety. I will do that, and if I have to, I will die trying.”

Hanan will be taking the American flag into battle, to show Americans the appreciation that Israelis feel for their support.

He added that he would tell those Americans who may be skeptical of U.S. support for yet another war, after the long conflict in Ukraine, that Israel is worth supporting.

“Israel is a beacon of democracy and light in the Middle East. It is, by far, I would say, America’s greatest ally,” Hanan said.

He added: “Whatever Israel experiences in general ends up in America. … All the different types of terrorism we get here eventually end up in other areas of the world. … These are Islamic fundamentalists. They exist everywhere in the world and their ideology is so dangerous to our principles, our moralities, that we have to find it and get if it before it takes us and our children.

“Israel is on the front lines of this fight. And what Hamas has shown is that they are no different than ISIS or Al Qaeda or the Taliban. In fact, it’s the same ideology,” he explained. “And Israel really is a country that wants peace. It wants to live quietly, surrounded by its neighbors — what peace. And I think Americans can appreciate that.

“I just think that sometimes Americans get carried away with the narrative that’s spread that we are the aggressors, when really all we want to do is defend ourselves. … I think Americans can understand. They should be supporting a people who want to make peace and want to live in peace.

“And I do think that Americans do support us. I really do. We absolutely appreciate and love the support we’ve been given from America, from the beginning of the State of Israel.”

Tune in to SiriusXM Patriot 125 on Sunday, Oct. 22, from 7-10 p.m. ET, for an interview with Hanan on Breitbart News Sunday.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.