Maj. David Haim Meir, 31: Sayeret Matkal reservist and new father
Killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of Kibbutz Be’eri
Maj. (res.) David Haim Meir, 31, a Sayeret Matkal soldier, from Jerusalem, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of Kibbutz Be’eri.
A reservist in the elite unit, David was called up the morning of the attack, and quickly headed south toward the front line.
Meeting up with his comrades, they headed first to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where they helped treat the wounded at the gate outside. According to his family, David wanted to enter the kibbutz but his commander said no, since they couldn’t make contact with the other forces inside and he was concerned about friendly fire.
The team then headed in the afternoon to Kibbutz Be’eri, where David was killed while they were trying to root out Hamas terrorists hiding inside homes. Two other Sayeret Matkal soldiers were killed in Be’eri that day — Maj. Amir Skoury and Lt. Nave Lax.
David was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on October 10. He is survived by his wife, Anat, their son, Shaked, 7 months, his parents, Yair and Chaya and his six siblings, Ori, Achiya, Naama, Avital, Tzuriel and Gilat.
His father, Yair, died several months after David was killed.
A photo of David’s baby son, Shaked, grinning at his graveside on the month anniversary of his death, struck a chord with many Israelis.
The youngest of seven siblings, David grew up in the West Bank settlement of Kochav Hashahar, according to a state eulogy. He attended a local elementary school and went to a yeshiva high school in the Kiryat Arba settlement.
David loved sports and extreme activities, including playing soccer, riding mountain bikes, running marathons and challenging himself on ninja workout courses.
After high school he attended the Bnei David pre-military yeshiva academy and then enlisted in the IDF in December 2011, joining the elite Sayeret Matkal unit. He completed an officer’s course and spent a total of seven years in the unit, staying on beyond the mandatory service period.
Following his release, David worked in hi-tech and then in investments, before getting a job as the VP of business development at a real estate firm in Jerusalem.
David and Anat married in 2021 and settled in the Nahlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem. When his son, Shaked, was born in early 2023, David was overjoyed with the new world of fatherhood.
Despite her husband’s long military career and ongoing reserve duty, Anat never imagined she would lose him this way.
“He enjoyed every moment of civilian life and family and being home, it had nothing to do with our life that he died in the army,” Anat told the Mako news site. “But that was so David, to die in the most heroic manner. To live a full family life, but the moment that he was needed, to give everything.”
Anat said David would be embarrassed by all the attention he received in his death, because “he always played things down. One of the dissonances in David was that he was very confident, but he didn’t hold himself in high regard. He always gave others space and praised others, he hated when people brought up that he was in Sayeret Matkal, he didn’t like it. He didn’t want to date someone who just wanted to go out with him because he was in Sayeret Matkal.”
Anat said that at his funeral, his commander eulogized him very aptly: “With a shy smile and the determination of a herd of elephants, there was no task you couldn’t handle.”
She said that their son, Shaked “looks so much like [David], he’s sweet and happy.”
On his gravestone, she said, they wrote a line from a Naomi Shemer song, “A Father’s Song,” with the lyrics, “It is not in vain, my brother, that you have hewn stones for a new building, for from these stones, a temple will be built.”
David, she said, “loved classic Israeli songs, he knew all the words. I would call him “Beyonce” because he really knew how to belt a tune. Among all the moments of him singing, I found a video of him singing to his son, and it was this song. This is really his last wish. I am sure that something big will still come from him. That his death was not in vain.”
