For the first time during this war, a team of reporters of Kan News was allowed to accompany the IDF soldiers facilitating the escape of Gazan residents from the northern Gaza Strip to the south.

While Israeli soldiers are securing the humanitarian corridor on Salah al-Din Street, they are scanning the crowds for the possibility that hostages, or terrorists, are being smuggled among them.

"Is there a girl here who understands Hebrew? Is there a boy or girl here who understands Hebrew?" the soldiers shout through loudspeakers. "Children, anyone who understands Hebrew, run to me, don't be afraid!

Asked if the soldiers are operating under the assumption that hostages were already smuggled south, Col. Nitay Okashi, commander of the Jerusalem Reserve Brigade, answered: "For now, as far as we understand, at least on the humanitarian corridor, they haven't taken hostages south, but what I'm saying here is just an assumption and not something certain."

The reporters were later taken to an innocent-looking house on the outskirts of the Zeitoun neighborhood, were the battle still rages. Under the stairs, the soldiers found a 15-kilo claymore mine.

"We were clearing the house, and then as you saw, in the stairwell we found the mine… and in what is called the underwear drawer, three handgrenades. I have to say, there is nothing innocent here, the whole area here is one big battlefield," explained Col. Okashi.

Later, the reporters also met Battalion Commander Lotem, whose speech to his soldiers just before the ground invasion began went viral.

"War can degrade the human being to the lowest creatures and impulses: Fear, cruelty, egoism, evil. To strip us of everything that makes us human, of humanity," he said then.

Now in the depths of the battlefield, he stood by his words from before: "I told my soldiers… We are better than our enemy in how we fight, in quality, and in humanity and morality. That's how we win."

Republished with permission from All Israel News