URBANA — A member of the Israel Defense Forces visited the Illini Union Monday night to share his experience living and serving in war zones and discuss the U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran.
Eli Wininger, a Los Angeles native and an IDF reservist, said he grew up in a family with strong Zionist beliefs. His grandfather was a Holocaust survivor, and he said ancestors on his mother’s side escaped religious persecution in Tunisia.
“Growing up, I realized, and I was taught by my parents and my grandparents, we need to defend [Israel] at all costs,” Wininger said.
Wininger said he enlisted in the IDF in 2016 and completed his full-time duty in 2019. He said he’ll be a reservist until he turns 40, “which means that anytime Israel needs me, they can call me up.”
When the Hamas attack on Israel happened on Oct. 7, 2023, Wininger said he was called back to serve in the war. He said he and his fellow soldiers embraced each other before going into Gaza.
“We all huddled up together as a prayer and just looked each other in the eyes,” he said. “These are your best friends that we text every single day, but you don’t know if the person next to you is going to come back.”
The Associated Press reports the war in Gaza began when Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza. In response, Israel’s campaign has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 170,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs says more than 900 IDF soldiers have been killed during the war. Wininger said his close friend was killed in an attack in Gaza.
“I think anyone who has been in war as a soldier knows that war is bad and awful and scary,” he said.
Wininger said he is “against war,” but he supports the war in Iran because he thinks it can lead to long-term peace.
“Coming from an American perspective, it’s an important war to be in, even though war is bad inherently,” Wininger said. “If someone is against the war because they don’t want U.S. involvement in any wars, they have to realize that Iran wants the destruction of the United States of America.”
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign student organization Illini Students Supporting Israel hosted the event.
Avia Lynch, a U of I freshman studying psychology with a minor in Jewish Studies, said it’s important to honor and recognize Wininger and other IDF soldiers’ efforts.
“Eli was serving in the IDF when hostages were still in Gaza, and he was actually one of the soldiers that went into Gaza and was retrieving hostages and rescuing them,” said Lynch, who also serves as membership chair of the Illini SSI.
“It’s really important, not only to bring light to the fact that that all happened, and while all the hostages are free, that it doesn’t erase what happened.”
This is the first event SSI hosted since re-launching as a student organization over winter break, according to Claire Eisenstadt, a U of I sophomore student in political science and economics and the president of the Illini SSI.
Eisenstadt said her goal is to build a coalition for Jewish students at the U of I. The group plans to set up a table once a week on the Main Quad.
She said the group’s board members have already been treated with intimidation and in ways that have made them feel threatened.
“We were very nervous, because we’ve never gotten threats to be spat at before, so that was scary, but that just happened,” she said. “We were very intimidated by the weird onlookers. But… the point of our RSO is to not be scared away by all these people trying to intimidate us and push us away.”
Eisenstadt said she regularly deals with harassment as a Jewish student.
“This is what the daily life of a Jewish student is,” Eisenstadt said.
In his speech, Wininger discussed the importance of standing up to harassment on campus.
“It’s scary to step in, but it’s so important for you to realize that you have to do it,” he said.