FIDF season: Israeli Naval officer visits New York

Israeli naval captain Ori Dadon has seen combat in two news making skirmishes in the defense of Israel and spoke with the Jewish Star about his life and experiences as first company commander aboard the Israeli Navy ship the Nitzachon.

Dadon visited the United States to appear at the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) gala in New York in March. Other soldiers will be in attendance at the upcoming Five Towns and Greater South Shore 2nd Annual Community Event to benefit the soldiers of the IDF on May 22nd at the Sephardic Temple in Cedarhurst.

Captain Dadon, age 24, was born in Ramle and moved with his family at age 13 to Modi’in. He served the standard three years of service in the Navy and earned a BS in political science and economics at Haifa through the Naval Academy. He is currently first command and defense officer, a company commander on the missile boat, in command of 15 fighters. His responsibility includes the ship’s systems and the ship, and protecting Israel from missile and enemy attack, he said. He said that they “eat, fight and sleep on the ship,” that it is “crowded,” with 60 people on the ship. “There is no privacy,” he added, “you have to learn to live like this.”

While at shore, he takes care of the systems, the technical aspects of the ship. While at sea, they practice combat situations and sailing. He noted that the patrols use smaller, faster boats since they have to watch for speedboats. “We are for wartime—preparing for wartime,” he explained, noting that they have “a lot of weapons, missiles, sea to sea against boats, artillery against missiles and small weapons.”

Dadon said that he was on one of the “big boats involved in the Mavi Marmara, against the flotilla to the Gaza Strip to make a scandal, and to actually stop them. We had to stop the flotilla from reaching the Gaza Strip. They had 15 vessels to break the blockade. I reached the other vessels and took them to the port of Ashdod.” He said the people were returned to their own country.

Another operation that Dadon and his ship were involved with was the “smuggling ship Victoria,” he recounted, that carried weapons illegally from Iran to Egypt and then to the Gaza Strip. “My ship detected the Victoria at sea. They didn’t know that they had weapons on board. We found 50 tons of different weapons, rockets, missiles from shore to sea—the worst—can target civilian and navy ships from Gaza.” He said that there were two other ships on the operation besides the Nitzachon. “Some soldiers got on the ship and found it,” he pointed out. “It was in containers. The captain of the ship didn’t know what he was moving from port to port. (His) mission was to take the ship from one place to another. He didn’t know it was a great operation. He cooperated and invited us to come aboard and look for the weapons. He knew that we suspected weapons, we radioed the ship that we suspected and he invited us aboard.”

He explained that his position is “very challenging.” He is grateful for the opportunity to “contribute to the protection of the Israeli seas” and combining technology and commanding “very smart people is a challenge.” He noted that that is what attracted him to the naval academy. He plans to stay in the navy “so far.” He added that Haifa is a “pretty city—I have to get used to her. The shore is very beautiful, there is a lot of culture, the Carmel is a beautiful mountain—the city has magic.”

“I am very honored to serve my country, the homeland for the Jewish people, and the tragic events of our history make me very grateful to be a commander of smart, motivated soldiers,” he said. “It’s very fulfilling. I am thankful to my country that I can serve.” He noted that his grandparents come from Morocco and Iraq and that he studied science, physics and Arabic in his high school in Modi’in.

For more information about the FIDF, contact Rebecca Feld Director of Long Island at 646 274-9661 or Rebecca.Feld@fidf.org.