Lt. Col. Levi Davis’s story is the kind of hard, uncomfortable truth the mainstream media hopes you’ll scroll past: a newly married Israeli combat engineer who walked into Gaza to destroy the tunnels that have spread death and terror, and walked away from an explosion that killed comrades and could have killed him. His account, given to CBN News, reads like a sober testament to what a nation faces when evil marches across a border and murders civilians without warning.
Davis was thrown into this inferno after Hamas’s savage October 7 assault that changed the region forever, a day of slaughter and mass kidnappings that triggered the IDF’s determined campaign to dismantle the terror networks operating out of Gaza. He had been married just two months when the war began, and like so many soldiers, he left home because duty demanded it.
His work as a combat engineer wasn’t glamorous — it was explosives, tunnels, long shifts and the constant knowledge that one mistake could be the last thing anyone saw. Davis describes mission after mission: going in, rigging, blowing, pulling back, and doing it again with little sleep and no room for error. This is the grind of victory in modern warfare, not handshakes and photo-ops.
On one mission his team was delayed by minutes, and that delay saved their lives while others were not so lucky; two teammates were killed and more badly wounded when tunnels and a missile factory suddenly detonated. Those are not abstract casualty numbers to be debated on late-night panels — they are fathers, husbands and friends, and the details Davis recounts should harden public resolve against the architects of such murder.
What stands out beyond the firefight is the man’s faith. Davis says he found himself forced to practice the Christian imperative to pray for one’s enemies, to forgive, and to seek healing in a context where forgiveness is the hardest thing in the world to offer. Conservatives should applaud, not apologize for, the role faith plays in sustaining soldiers under fire; faith, not fashionable moral relativism, is what keeps men whole when the unthinkable happens.
This story should also be a wake-up call about moral clarity in foreign policy. There is no equivalence between a state defending its citizens and terrorists who celebrate slaughter; politicians and commentators who blur that line do real damage to troops and to allies. If Western leaders want peace, they must first be willing to call evil by its name and stand with those who risk everything to root it out.
Support for Israel’s defenders is not a partisan talking point — it is a recognition that civilization requires courage, clarity and commitment. Levi Davis’s narrow escape and his resolve to keep serving are reminders that courage still exists and that public opinion should back, not undermine, those who fight to protect innocent lives and to dismantle the networks that export barbarism.
