This is a story which appeared about a week and a half ago about the 24-year-old Israeli mountain climber on Mt. Everest, Nadav – which means generous – Nadav Ben-Yehuda, which means the son of Judah – was after months of preparation and expense 300 meters short of his goal, the top of Mt. Everest when he passed a fellow climber and friend who had fallen and appeared to be on the verge of death. Nadav bent down, picked him up and carried back down the mountain and saved his life.

Over the weekend there more details of this amazing story. First of all, it seems as if the assault on Mt. Everest has now become one busy and crowded pastime. It is literally crowded now on the main trails with climbers in the few weeks a year the weather permits an attempt to ascent to the top. And one literally for a time must wait for others to pass, and as one climbs closer and closer to the top, one must pass by on the sides of the trail the frozen corpses of climbers who died making the effort, fell by the way side and whose remains have never been brought for a proper burial. It sounds all terribly macabre to yours truly.

And when this story broke, we read about this Israeli hero who came upon a friend who had literally been passed by by other climbers as he lay dying, for in their environment taking one step can exhaust the body for many minutes, it is accepted climbing etiquette to excuse oneself from making the herculean effort to help a fallen climber. So they die off to the side and their frozen bodies can remain there for years.

So Nadav Ben-Yehuda is this veteran I think, of the Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, the toughest soldiers in the Brigade, its finest physical specimens. Just two months before Ben-Yehuda went off to Nepal for the ultimate climb, he won the stair-climbing championship Tel-Aviv by racing up 76 flights of a skyscraper and doing it thirteen times in a row.

What he did on Mt. Everest was, they say, virtually superhuman; probably never done before. Up there over 29,000 feet, 300 meters from the top, he decides to forsake his lifetime goal in order to save the life of a fellow climber others passed by, a climber on the verge of death and saved his life by hoisting him on his shoulders and carrying back down for the next eight hours.

Talk about being in shape.

Oh, and there was a political side of story. Nadav’s friend Ayran Irmak is a Turk, a Muslim.

I did a search on the leading Turk newspaper in English Zaman, which of course is the mispronounced Hebrew word zman.

I found nothing. One can only guess how and if at all the Turkish media played this story about the rescue of a Turk by a recently demobilized Israeli commando; you know, like the naval commandos on the Mavi Marmara whose behavior Israel has to apologize for…