This is how the “Brave Heart” operation was carried out to identify Ran Guili

At the end of Operation “Brave Heart”, and thanks to the hard work of the IDF forces in the field, yesterday (Monday) the last abductee, Major Ran Gueli, was returned to Israel. Dr. Assi Sharon, an expert in oral and facial reconstruction, at the Hadassah Medical Center, who operated alongside the forces in Gaza, told Mako Health about the operation, the moments of vigilance, and the second in which her soul was cut off when she realized that the findings on the ground may indeed indicate that it is the body of Goyili, the hero of Israel.

“This is our routine job – to identify people who there is no other way to know who they are,” says Dr. Sharon. Since October 7, she explains, this work has become a national mission that continues day after day: identifying civilians and security forces who are not IDF casualties, alongside the parallel work of Unit 6017 in the IDF. “We are two units that work in parallel,” she says, “and whenever there is a crime that needs to be answered – we are there.”

When it was decided to launch the operation to identify Goyili, Dr. Sharon received a phone call from the commander of the operation, Avi Levin – a close partner in her work since the beginning of the war. He asked her to join, and together with Dr. Ilana Engel, her deputy, they were recruited into the IDF to enter the field to assist in the operation.

“Identification by teeth is one of the three scientific means of identification by which an unknown person can be identified,” explains Dr. Sharon. “In order to reach an unequivocal identification, there must be information from before death – and then it must be compared to what can be extracted from the body.” Since October 7, her unit has been collecting and keeping in an orderly manner dental files of the murdered and missing: from X-rays taken from hospital funds and imaging centers, to material collected as part of a recruitment drive to the IDF “We built a file of the teeth of each missing person, so that if we need to identify the space – the information will be ready.”

This work, she adds, already at the beginning of the war became a critical tool in the field. “Each time they contacted us – either to rule out bodies that the IDF found and say that they were not the abducted bodies, or to identify by teeth when the body was already in a state of decay. In such cases, there is no time to hesitate – identification by teeth is a matter of minutes.”

Since the occupation of identification became an intense routine throughout the war, Dr. Sharon says that she and the members of the unit went through thousands of bodies until they reached a point where they already knew the dental photographs of the abductees by heart. “Every time we received a photograph from the field, or we were given a space abducted to the border, we would stand in the middle of the night with a flashlight or a lamp, and we would do an inspection of the space, and that way we could very quickly give information to the family,” she says.

After practicing the terrain route and the area – the team entered Gaza. “We arrived at the location, settled down and started working. This is a difficult area of ​​rubble, stones, rocks and ash – and large pits that were uncovered one after another.” She says that from the moment they entered the area it was already clear that this was an unusual operation by any standard. “We knew there were 800 bodies there. They were buried in mass graves,” she says. According to her, the operation was carefully planned based on intelligence, with specific areas where concentrations of bodies were identified.

According to her, in every hole that was dug, dentists from the team stood and examined body after body. When a relevant suspicion arose, the team moved on to the next step. “Every time they could say something – or rule it out, another dentist would come to do another examination.” At the same time, she herself received photos and updates directly from the field to WhatsApp, and had to make a quick decision: “I went through one by one, and I had to say if it was relevant to take an X-ray of the teeth to compare the findings – or not.”

The work, she says, was continuous and intense and lasted until early morning. “We examined 210 bodies and they were found to be unsuitable,” she says. In cases where there was a question mark, they did not try to guess. “If there was any doubt (for example if the body did not have a head), we said that perhaps another examination in Israel was necessary.”

After a few hours of rest outside the strip, came the stage that accelerated the pace. “We sat for about three hours outside of Gaza, and at this point the YSR teams (the IDF’s scanning unit) prepared another 500 bodies for us that were already outside,” she says. “It sped up the procedure. We knew we had nothing to wait for the excavations and we only had to pass the 500.”

Then, in the middle of that sequence, came one image that jumped out at her. “A picture was sent to me on WhatsApp, they told me: ‘Look,’ and then as soon as I looked at the picture, my heart rate jumped in a second. I asked myself if it might actually be him. It was crazy excitement, I lost my composure. I was so excited and wanted to see the x-rays to say that it was indeed him.”

Dr. Sharon says that at that moment she asked for the body to be brought to the dental x-ray station, and that’s where the dentists of unit 6017 came into action. one to one It was a perfect identification.”

But along with the excitement, she emphasizes, there was also a moment of heavy responsibility. “I knew I had to give an immediate answer to the IDF,” she says, and adds, it was clear to her that things had to be kept completely quiet until the process was completed. “I informed the police that indeed it was probably him,” she says, “but I asked not to say anything yet.” After the last photographs, she says, there was no longer any doubt: “I knew it was him.”

Dr. Sharon says that the moment when the final identification became clear also shook people who had already seen everything. “People who work with corpses are very tough people,” she says. “It’s a very difficult job. You go into hard work, like on October 7th, put on armor, a mask on your face – and work.” But this time, she says, something changed in the air. “We realized that this was the last abductee and that it was over.”

And then, she says, the moment came when everything stopped. “I have to say that I never imagined that so many people from the IDF would disintegrate like this. These are fighters, military personnel and dentists who have been doing this work for almost two and a half years – there was not a single dry eye,” she says. “People were excited, a sense of awe.” According to her, one last check was made to identify the clothes as well, and then they gathered them all together. “We said Kaddish,” she says. “There was a ceremony with the Chief of Staff. A very special moment. I can understand that people think that this is where the war ended. When I was standing there, I realized that I could take off the chain with the yellow ribbon – and I did it.”

But this ending, she admits, came with pain. “This is a very difficult moment,” she says. “It’s very difficult to talk about joy. Even though something good has happened, immediately after it, a terrible sadness falls on you, because basically it means that this is him, and he is not alive. We wait for this moment for so long, and on the other hand, it is final. It is sad.”

Dr. Sharon says that she herself did not believe that this moment would come. I didn’t believe it. I thought that it would not happen in my life, maybe in the next life of my replacements. And it happened.”