In Karnei Shomron, a community mourns a fallen son, US-Israeli Amichai Oster
The IDF reservist was abroad on October 7 but returned to join his unit, his mother said at his funeral on Tuesday. ‘He died doing what he came home to do’
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
KARNEI SHOMRON — Amichai Yisrael Yehoshua Oster was on vacation in Salt Lake City, Utah, when he heard of the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel.
Learning that Hamas gunmen had rampaged through southern Israel, killing over 1,200 people and taking more than 240 hostages, the 24-year-old American-Israeli Sgt. First Class in reserves “immediately set out to return home,” his mother Marcy recalled at his funeral on Tuesday afternoon at the Karnei Shomron military cemetery.
Standing under a cloudy sky in a tree-lined West Bank valley, Oster said that her son had been “determined to serve his country.”
Amichai hadn’t been required to serve, his sister later explained during her own eulogy. He had been told to wait but volunteered to join the fight right away.
As Amichai’s family sat shoulder to shoulder with wounded members of his unit in front of his freshly dug grave, a crowd of hundreds of mourners attempted to process the loss of a young man who had only started on his life’s journey. A faint rainbow appeared overhead as his father threw dirt to begin covering the casket.
“Recently, when he was home on a two-day leave, I told him that I felt responsible for the fact that he was fighting in a war and he didn’t make the decision to come on aliyah, that we made it for him,” mother Marcy recalled as mourners sobbed quietly.
“He thought about it for a moment and replied, ‘Mom, what makes you think that if you had never made aliyah that I never would have come here to fight for our country?’” she recounted.
Marcy, a long-time journalist, eulogized her son, describing his intense interest in a variety of subjects (“music, art, science, photography, animals, plants and decorating cakes”) and how he loved to travel the length and breadth of the land of Israel.
“Amichai did indeed rush here to fight for his country and for all of us,” she continued.
“He was here doing exactly what he wanted to be doing. He died doing what he came home to do. And now he will remain forever frozen in your memories as a beautiful, brave, caring young man. A quiet hero,” she said.
“Since Amichai was a child I can never recall him without a smile on his face,” Eddy Resnick, a neighbor, told The Times of Israel.
“Even so, I knew he was a serious young man. Amichai was unassuming but always excelled at everything. I cannot express the loss of Amichai to myself and the community.”
As the military cantor began to sing the final “El Maleh Rachamim” prayer, it began to drizzle.
