Master Sgt. Omri Belkin, 25: Future law student who loved to sail

Master Sgt. (res.) Omri Belkin, 25, an instructor in the special forces LOTAR counterterrorism unit, from Ramat Hasharon, was killed on October 7 while battling Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri.

Omri was called up the morning of the attack to reserve duty with his LOTAR comrades. Upon arriving down south, they entered Kibbutz Be’eri and tried to rescue the residents under siege by the Hamas invasion. Omri was killed there in the battle along with his comrades Maj. Sagi Golan and Maj. (res.) Roee Negri.

He was buried on October 11 in Ramat Hasharon. He is survived by his father, Roni, and his older brother, Roy. His mother, Roni, died in 2016, when Omri was 18.

According to a memorial website, Omri “was an educator, sailor, soldier, beloved son and brother, and a person of exceptional character.” In high school, Omri, who always loved the sea, volunteered with the Tel Aviv Sea Scouts. After graduating, he did a year of national service with the Sea Scouts in Netanya, before joining LOTAR, the IDF’s elite counterterrorism unit. He stayed on in the IDF for a few months past his mandatory period, and continued to serve in the reserves, his family said.

Boating and sailing was his true love, and after completing his army service he returned to leading the Sea Scouts in Netanya for 18 months before setting off to travel around eastern Asia with his brother and friends. They returned to Israel in September 2023, according to the memorial site, and Omri returned to volunteering with the Sea Scouts. He was slated to soon after begin studies at Tel Aviv University in law and political studies, according to the university.

His loved ones succeeded in raising more than NIS 250,000 to donate a new sailboat to the Sea Scouts in his honor, writing that: “To him, a boat was not just a vessel but, first and foremost, a means to teach mutual responsibility, accountability, cooperation, respect, true friendship, and, of course, the joy of sailing and the love of the sea.”

Omri’s friend, Adam Gabay, told a Kan podcast that he and Omri had known each other since they were 10 years old, and grew up together in the Tel Aviv Sea Scouts.

“He spent six months in the Far East, he came back to Israel just two weeks before October 7,” Adam recounted. “He wanted to study law, like his mother, of blessed memory, she was a very well known lawyer… He admired her, he rode a motorcycle like she did, he wanted to study law like she did.”

But on October 7, Adam said, “he was one of those people, who saw that something was going on and woke up and just took themselves” to the front lines to join the efforts. Omri, he said, “was a guy of music, of love, of the sea, of laughter and of fun.”

Omri’s brother, Roy, wrote on Facebook about the pain of “losing your best friend… plus the fact that he was my little brother.”

On what would have been Roy’s 26th birthday, Omri wrote, “the first without you, my brother, 250 friends came to celebrate your birthday in our yard, to throw tomatoes at comedians and to memorialize you exactly as you were — strange, totally crazy and absolutely hilarious.”

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