Lt. Sahar Tal, 20: Intelligence officer who loved basketball
Killed while battling Hamas at the Yiftah IDF outpost on October 7
Lt. Sahar Tal, 20, an intelligence officer in the 7th Armored Brigade, from Kibbutz Tzora, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.
Sahar was home on break the morning of the attack, but immediately decided to head to the front lines when he heard what was happening, his family said. He left home from his kibbutz near Beit Shemesh and headed to Ashkelon, where he joined up with some of his comrades.
Together they headed to the Yiftah IDF outpost next to Zikim, where he was shot dead by Hamas gunmen while trying to evacuate those who had already been wounded.
Sahar was buried in Tzora on October 12. He is survived by his parents, Pnina and Erez, and his siblings Rotem and Shaked.
As a basketball lover, his family is working to raise funds to refurbish the court in Kibbutz Tzora in his memory, to give new life to the place “where he could be found every Saturday night, tossing toward the basketball and most of the time making it.”
In a post on a memorial Instagram page, friends of Sahar, who was known as “Chico” around the kibbutz, described him as a “boy who was always happy.”
They want people to know “about all of the joy that he spread and all of the light that was in him — because there was a lot. Sahar was the kind of person who just saw the good in things, he enjoyed the simple things and wasn’t materialistic, he knew how to appreciate everything.”
Writing on a memorial site for fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team, Sahar’s father, Erez, said his son was “very beloved by his classmates and all his childhood friends. He was an excellent athlete, the number one sprinter in his grade, a happy child and teen, always smiling, nothing was difficult or hard for him.”
Erez wrote that Sahar “loved to dance, loved to learn, and really loved sports.” He played basketball with a youth and teen league in the region and was also a counselor in the local youth troop. “And in addition he always really loved Maccabi Tel Aviv.”
Sahar “really loved his army service, he viewed it with a great sense of mission and a way to achieve his aspirations. Everything was cut short that terrible morning.”
