An army marches on its stomach, Napoleon Bonaparte is supposed to have said, and this has remained true for IDF soldiers fighting in the Swords of Iron war.
While food is essential for military operations, warriors in Gaza battlefields can only rarely expect good, warm meals. Even food donated by the Israeli public arrives cold by the time it crosses the Gaza border.
However, for the 8111 infantry battalion’s Kaf Company, tasty hot meals come a little more often thanks to Stav Netta-Chaim, the first platoon’s sergeant. Often using little more than canned food and combat rations, the reservist uses his years of experience as a chef and restaurateur to cook up delicious meals that raise soldiers’ morale even on the dampest Gaza nights.
Netta-Chaim surprised soldiers last Wednesday by turning the Khan Yunis outpost’s “bar,” called the “tunnel shaft,” into a hummusiya.
Making hot, delicious hummus in the heart of Gaza
“Hummus is one of my favorite foods,” Netta-Chaim told me during our service in the war. The company had amassed many leftover cans of chickpeas from combat rations, and often the sergeant cooks dishes based on the intersections of his cravings and what foodstuffs are available.
As airstrikes, tank shells, and helicopter gunship rockets boomed in the background, Netta-Chaim boiled the chickpeas in bottled water and soda on a camping stove, breaking down the proteins. After they had been boiled for two hours, he skimmed the impurities off the top and, using an empty oil bottle, mashed the beans with garlic, onion, and lemon zest. The chickpea mash was mixed with za’atar, cumin, Hawayej, and tehina. Plates of the hummus were topped with spicy s’chug, and served with olives and pickles – also from combat rations cans. Pitot, toasted on the gas burner, were a serendipitous addition to the meal, brought in on a convoy.
The soldiers ravenously tore into the meal, including fellow reservist and former communications minister Yoaz Hendel, who ate a dish of the hummus with Netta-Chaim and me as we sat in one of the outpost’s sandy guard posts.
“I can report that I will be a returning customer,” Hendel wrote on Facebook on Thursday in response to a Walla report on Neta-Chaim’s hummus. “I highly recommend it.”
Netta-Chaim has been cooking for his soldiers since they were first drafted on October 7.
“It makes you forget for a second you’re in a war,” Netta-Chaim told me as we prepared for a raid on a hive of Hamas tunnel systems last Friday. During the three-day operation, he quite literally stumbled onto the main tunnel shaft entrance, almost falling inside.
When the company was first sent to Kissufim in the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7, the platoon had stationed itself in one of the residences. During the first Shabbat, spent securing the decimated kibbutz from terrorists and under mortar bombardment, Netta-Chaim let challah dough rise for 12 hours. He then baked the challot in a fire oven in one of the backyards. The braided bread was laced with salt and fresh oregano picked from a garden. The aroma of baked bread brought a sense of calm to the tense soldiers as they recited Shabbat Kiddush blessings.
Last Monday, Netta-Chaim also made a version of carbonara. Normally a decidedly unkosher Italian pasta dish with pork, it was adapted using kabanos sausages. The long-storage sausages were diced into half dimes and stir-fried in olive oil until crispy.
Netta-Chaim said that he also makes such dishes at home, with “whatever ingredients I have.”
Working with whatever one has on hand is a classic element of the Israeli military spirit, and it has often manifested in the way in which Israeli soldiers improve their conditions in the field. The company didn’t have plates at the beginning of the tenure in the Khan Yunis outskirts but plenty of water bottles – leading us to cut them in half and use them as bowls. Still other water bottles were stuffed into burlap sacks to create bean bag-like chairs. Hygiene is also an issue in the field. A shower was set up using some leftover tarp and wood planks. And for toilets, empty ammo crates were lined with plastic bags. However, as Israeli soldiers love to eat, much of the ingenuity surrounded mealtime.
On Wednesday, after another long day of operations, the sergeant made sabih, an Iraqi-Jewish sandwich made with fried aubergine and hard-boiled egg. The sandwich, packed with chopped salad, onion, parsley, and tehina, was the best sabih I had ever eaten, in Israel or Gaza.
One of the most memorable meals that Netta-Chaim has made during the war is pizza. Netta-Chaim is one of the partners in Little Sister’s Pizza, a non-kosher gourmet pizza parlor. The sergeant’s partner brought the ovens and supplies that the company uses for private events to Kibbutz Re’im when the battalion had been relocated there from Kissufim.
“It was like seeing your kid again after a month,” he recalled.
Netta-Chaim made 70 pizzas in two hours, with different toppings such as Kalamata olive and artichoke, and red onion and hot pepper.
Little Sister’s Pizza has been operating for five years, a subsidiary of its “big brother,” Culi Tamam catering. The restaurant has pizza parlors in Even Yehuda, Hod Hasharon, and soon in Jaffa Port. It uses a secret recipe that Netta-Chaim has tinkered with for years, using a combination of a few techniques to create pizza pies suitable for both dining in and takeout.
WHILE HE has found a modicum of joy in cooking for his fellow soldiers, Netta-Chaim, like many other reservists, had to leave behind his business for almost 100 days.
They had to close or operate in a limited capacity during the war when both Netta-Chaim and a partner were in reserve duty, and six other employees were called up.
“At the beginning, people ordered a lot. When there is tension, people order pizza,” he noted
Netta-Chaim mentioned to Hendel and me that the state didn’t help out his business, and he lost a lot of money because it didn’t meet tax exemption criteria because of last year’s earnings.
Not all sacrifices are immediately apparent. Reservists have set aside their lives, putting everything on hold in order to serve and secure a future for the entire country. While they readily take on his sacrifice, it doesn’t make it any easier; and as 100 days of service neared, many in the company had begun to wonder whether they had contributed enough and that perhaps there were others who could take their place. Ultimately, most soldiers have said that they cannot pass this responsibility on to others, especially since leaving would burden their brothers in arms.
Netta-Chaim has left behind his wife, family, and business to serve with his soldiers and has committed to guiding them, using all the skills at his disposal — including making sure they have a full stomach to march on.
The writer is an IDF reservist serving with Netta-Chaim in the Gaza Strip.