Family of slain soldier rages at event honoring researcher he was escorting in Lebanon
Grandfather of fallen soldier Gur Kehati lambastes local brigade commander for ‘shaming’ the IDF by attending memorial event for 71-year-old Zeev Erlich amid military investigation

A memorial conference for a researcher who was killed after entering southern Lebanon last month was interrupted Wednesday by the family of a soldier who was killed alongside him, as they angrily demanded that their son’s sacrifice also be acknowledged.
Israel Defense Forces Sgt. Gur Kehati, 20, was killed during a gun battle with Hezbollah operatives on November 20, while in southern Lebanon alongside Zeev Erlich, 71, who was in IDF uniform and with a senior officer but had no official authorization from the army to be in Lebanon, where he was reportedly attempting to study antiquities.
According to Haaretz, the family had asked organizers to hold off on organizing a conference in Erlich’s memory until the completion of a military probe into the incident. At least one top military official reportedly pulled out due to the controversy.
“Our son was killed and nobody even bothered to make sure his picture would appear in this shit?” Ron Kehati, Gur Kehati’s father, told attendees at the memorial event organized by the Samaria Regional Council, where Erlich lived, throwing an object at a TV. “Did anyone remember him?”
Most participants refused to respond, though a few people told Kehati to “be quiet.”
“Don’t tell me to stop,” he yelled, walking up to a local brigade commander and Samaria Regional Council Head Yossi Dagan, who was standing next to the dais. “You don’t understand what you are doing here. What’s the rush to have a conference now? Why? The blood is still not dry.”
משפחתו של גור קהתי הגיעה לכנס שאורגן על ידי מועצת שומרון לזכר ז'אבו ארליך והחלה במחאה כשמח"ט שומרון, אריאל גונן, עלה לדבר. pic.twitter.com/NAvAHAbCcn
— Hagar Shezaf (@hagar_shezaf) December 25, 2024
According to Haaretz, another attendee told the family “You said your piece, now go home,” to which Assaf Agmon, Gur Kehati’s grandfather, responded, “Shame on you. Don’t you know what a bereaved father is? You are participating in the murder of my grandson. Go sacrifice your own kid to Molech.”
במהלך האירוע הסב התעמת גם עם אחד המשתתפים שאמר לבני המשפחה ללכת מהמקום. pic.twitter.com/c7oUGVvfhV
— Hagar Shezaf (@hagar_shezaf) December 25, 2024
Turning to the IDF brigade commander, Agmon reminded him that “the IDF is conducting an investigation into the person you came to honor, an investigation into a criminal act that led to the death of an IDF soldier whose grandfather I am.”
“When the IDF is conducting a military police investigation against someone who, in a criminal act, caused the death of an IDF soldier, you cannot come in an IDF uniform and honor the event,” Agmon continued. “You are shaming the IDF, you are humiliating the IDF, you are humiliating the death of Gur Kehati who ran to save his company commander. That is why he died.”
A video from the event showed others restraining Agmon, narrowly avoiding a physical altercation.
Other family members also challenged the participants and held up posters with pictures of Gur or death notices.
“How have you turned a civilian into a soldier?” Channel 12 quoted family members as having said. “Gur was a soldier who fell in Lebanon. Zeev was a civilian.”

In a statement, the Samaria Regional Council accused the family of violence, and claimed they were joined by leftist activists, accusing Agmon of being a leader of the “extreme left.”
According to an initial IDF probe following the deaths of Erlich and Kehati last month, the 71-year-old was granted permission to enter Lebanon from Golani Brigade chief of staff Col. Yoav Yarom in order to examine an ancient fortress.
Despite the belief that the area Erlich was brought to had been cleared of Hezbollah operatives by the military, two members of the Iran-backed terror group were hiding at the site and opened fire at the researcher, senior officer, and other soldiers who were accompanying them.
Yarom was moderately wounded in the gunbattle with the operatives and a company commander with the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion was also seriously wounded in the same incident.
The IDF retroactively recognized Erlich as a major in reserves, despite him not being on active duty when he was killed.
The incident occurred days before a November 27 ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah brought to a halt more than a year of hostilities that began when the terror group, unprovoked, began firing into Israel on October 8, 2023.
It claimed that attacks were launched in solidarity with Hamas a day after the Palestinian terror group launched a massacre in southern Israel, and sparked the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. The relentless Hezbollah attacks forced the displacement of some 60,000 residents of northern Israel.
The IDF has until January to withdraw from southern Lebanon, where troops have been operating since October to drive Hezbollah from the border region, and cede responsibility for the area to the Lebanese army.