About a dozen students gathered in Black Plaza Classrooms 189 to listen to Israel Defense Forces soldier Eli Wininger speak about his experiences fighting in Gaza at an April 23 event organized and funded by the Students Supporting Israel (SSI) club.
The Zionist club, founded by sophomore and club president Charlie Leeds in August, is one of over 200 chapters across the globe, according to the SSI movement’s website. Last semester, SSI held a 9/11 memorial event on Alumni Park.
“Everything that I’m gonna say in this speech, none of it goes into statistics, none of it goes into history and all this kind of stuff,” Wininger said. “This is my personal experience and what I’ve lived.”
Wininger is an American-Israeli L.A. native who enlisted as a commander in the IDF’s Sayeret Egoz unit in April 2016, where he served for three-and-a-half years, according to an interview with the advocacy organization Jewish Future Promise.
One day after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, Wininger said he voluntarily re-enlisted in the IDF. He said he spent two months doing reconnaissance missions in Lebanon and the West Bank and two months fighting in Gaza. He is currently a reservist.
The speaker event was organized by the freshman Jack Hesse, the club’s director of education. Hesse said he organized the event as part of his internship with StandWithUs, a pro-Israel educational organization.
SSI advertised the event through flyers and social media posts, but it was not booked through Inter-Club Council (ICC) or Student Activities, who found out about the event the evening before, according to ICC President Olivia Bates.
Speaker events are required to be approved by ICC at least six weeks in advance, according to ICC’s club information web page.
ICC and Student Activities tried to shut down the event, Bates said, but it was ultimately approved by Student Affairs, which holds administrative power.
Connie Horton, vice president for Student Affairs, declined to comment.
Minutes before the event started, President Jim Gash appeared and had a conversation with Wininger at the front of the classroom. Hesse said he invited Gash via email four days prior, but Gash was unable to stay for Wininger’s speech due to a prior commitment.
“He [Gash] has been very pro-Israel, which has been really good at Pepperdine, having that stance,” Hesse said.
Wininger began his half-hour speech by disclosing that he is not paid by the Israeli government and does not speak for the state of Israel. After detailing his family history and career, Wininger asked the students to close their eyes and imagine where they were on Oct. 7, 2023, before giving an overview of the day’s attacks.
“Now, open your eyes,” Wininger said. “Every single person here got the exact same thing. Every single person in this room was completely heartbroken and in shock.”
Wininger’s presentation focused primarily on his time in Gaza. He talked about his first mission, in which he found a rocket launcher under a child’s bed.
“I don’t think the little girl was using the rocket launcher, but Hamas was clearly storing it there, or her dad was storing it there, or her brother, or when she had left, then they used it as a storage facility,” Wininger said. “Whatever it was, there was rocket launchers, there were ammunitions, there was everything inside these innocent people’s homes.”
He also detailed what a day was like for him, including the combat strategies employed by his unit during missions in Gaza. He said using long-range rocket launchers was one of his jobs.
“90% of the homes that we went into had some sort of Hamas affiliation,” Wininger said. “That means they had either intelligence, they had weapons, they had tunnels in the area. They had some sort of connection with the military aspect of Hamas.”
One of Wininger’s missions involved going into a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA). He said his unit found a stack of Arabic-translated copies of “Mein Kampf,” an observation he used to conclude that the school was teaching antisemitism to Palestinian children.
After returning to the U.S., Wininger said he was troubled by the widespread criticism of Israel throughout the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel’s post-Oct. 7 ground and air campaign in Gaza has led to over 50,000 deaths, including over 15,000 under the age of 18, according to Reuters.
“It’s become cool almost to be against Israel, to be pro-Palestinian, to be anti-Zionist,” Wininger said. “It can be intimidating to stand up for Israel.”
After a five-minute break, the event continued with a 45-minute Q&A session with students. Leeds started by asking Wininger to recount instances where he saved Palestinian lives. Wininger explained how the IDF sends mass text messages, drops leaflets and drops “dud bombs” on buildings to warn civilians to evacuate.
In the wake of the current ongoing conflict, Israel’s military leadership reportedly loosened its rules of engagement, leading to weakened safeguards against civilian casualties, according to The New York Times.
Students also asked Wininger about his experiences back in the U.S. after his 2023 IDF service and how he deals with antisemitism.
“In person, luckily, I haven’t had anyone come yell antisemitic things to my face,” Wininger said. “Sometimes I’ll leave a college campus and people are accusing me of genocide and putting cameras in my face and all the things that you’ve seen.”
At the end of the event, the remaining attendees posed for a group photo with Wininger.
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Contact Henry Adams via email: henry.adams@pepperdine.edu
