Master Sgt. Itay Yehoshua, 36: Shin Bet officer was ‘modest and moral’

Master Sgt. (res.) Itay Yehoshua, 36, both a reservist in the General Staff Security Unit and the 36th Division and a Shin Bet officer, from Ra’anana, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of Kibbutz Be’eri.

The morning of the attack, Itay was home with his family when the sirens started. His wife nevertheless set out for work and shortly afterward he was called up to join the 36th Division fighting in the south. He left his daughter with his mother-in-law and set out to head to the front lines, not telling his wife in order not to worry her.

Itay fought all day with his comrades on the battlefield, engaging in several firefights with Hamas gunmen, first in Netiv Ha’asara and then in Kibbbutz Sa’ad and Kibbutz Alumim. In the afternoon, he arrived in Kibbutz Be’eri, where he was killed battling Hamas terrorists around 9 p.m. that evening.

He was buried on October 12 in Hadid. He is survived by his wife, Dafnie, their daughter Haley, 2, his parents Dorit and Yehoshua and his brothers Tomer and Guy.

Itay was born and raised in Hadid, a small town outside Lod. He always loved animals, helping raise chickens and reptiles in his backyard.

He attended high school in nearby Shoham, and after finishing he enlisted in the IDF in 2005, joining the Golani Brigade before qualifying for its elite anti-tank Orev unit. During his service he also trained as a paramedic.

Itay and Dafnie met when she was a flight attendant and he was working security on a flight. They wed in 2019, and their daughter was born in 2021. They settled in their apartment in Ra’anana a little over a year before he was killed. Though Itay was abroad a great deal of the time, he would always devote as much time as possible to his family when he was home, his loved ones said.

In 2010, Itay joined the Shin Bet, working as a security guard. Over the years he also worked as a mentor within the unit and was promoted to be a security team leader.

“Itay was always surrounded by friends, loved life, he was a modest and moral person,” reads a Shin Bet eulogy. “Itay always volunteered for any task in his modest and quiet way.”

He also had a bachelor’s degree in business management and political science from the Open University and an MBA from the Ono Academic College.

Marking six months since Itay was killed, Dafnie wrote on Facebook that the days without him “are lonelier, harder, but we keep going.”

“Our Haley is still magical and special, smart and confident, even though she’s changed so much since you’ve been gone,” she wrote. “She remembers you and talks about you every day, she’s the gift you gave me, that keeps me strong.”

Dafnie said Itay’s absence “is felt every moment of the day, more and more as time passes by. Not a day goes by that I don’t want to tell you something, or hear about your day, share with you the little daily things — the ones that are the most missed. The salad you would make me with love, the restaurant we’d go to in Hadera, without any special reason, the trips around the world… you were the perfect partner in so many ways.”

She added that she is mourning all their future plans “that we won’t get to achieve together, like the family trip to a safari in Africa that we wanted to do with Haley. They say that time heals all wounds, but I’m still waiting for it to happen.”

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