First Sgt. Dror Altun, 29: Dancer, Yamam police officer was a new dad

First Sgt. Dror Altun, 29, an officer in the elite Yamam counter-terror unit, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.

Dror was home the morning of the attack, and was immediately called up to head to the front lines. He and his comrades arrived at the Sha’ar Hanegev Junction which was beset by Hamas gunmen.

They and other Border Police officers worked to repel the Hamas invasion but they were vastly outnumbered. Dror was slain there in battle alongside fellow Yamam officers Supt. Moshael Shlomo and Sgt. Maj. Bar Sivan.

He is survived by his wife Clil, their son Erez, his parents Avi and Ruti and his older brothers Omri and Yuval. He was buried in Misgav on October 9.

The youngest in the family, Dror was born and raised in Tzurit, a small town in the Western Galilee, according to a police eulogy.

From a young age he was fiercely independent and loved to be outdoors, his family said, including once sneaking out of kindergarten, arriving at home and climbing in through the window.

He played soccer with a local team from a young age, but also loved dancing, learning ballroom dancing and even taking ballet lessons. He performed around the country and even traveled abroad with his troupe to Brazil and South Korea.

Dror enlisted in the IDF in March 2013 and served in the Combat Engineering Corps. He completed a commander’s course and was about to start an officer’s course when Operation Protective Edge began, and he took part in the fighting in Gaza.

Afterward, he completed the officer’s course and was appointed as a platoon commander and later commander of the battalion’s reconnaissance unit.

In 2019, Dror joined the Israel Police, completing the rigorous training to serve in Yamam and later training as a sapper, becoming a deputy team commander.

Dror and Clil met in middle school and were quickly inseparable, becoming a couple at age 14. After Dror completed his army service, they traveled together to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and scale peaks in China, Nepal, India, and Thailand.

In 2020, Dror and Clil got married and in March 2023, their son, Erez, was born and Dror was devoted to being the best father possible.

“Dror worked to be better than the person he was yesterday and always wanted to cause the people around him to be better to themselves,” wrote Clil on Facebook ahead of Memorial Day 2024.

“Dror was a true friend. He wasn’t satisfied with polite friendships, he would ask how people were getting by financially, how their relationships were really going, their communication, how things were with the kids,” she said. “He always believed that everyone around him could achieve anything and infected them with that belief.”

Clil said that her husband “always told his friends yes. No matter if it was going out for a beer or helping move apartments. And he was a little brother, but the brother who calls his big brothers just to chat and forces them to go out together, and reminds them to call their parents.”

Dror was “the son who helped with the cooking for Shabbat. The grandson who always asked Savta questions so she could tell the stories he knew she loved to tell.” In addition to all that, she said, “he was a father and a partner, but on that, perhaps one day I’ll write a book.”

Read more Those We Have Lost stories here.