Ori Danino, 25: Off-duty soldier went back to rescue friends at Nova

Master Sgt. Ori Danino, 25, a signals officer in the Paratroopers Brigade’s 202nd Battalion, from Jerusalem, was kidnapped from the Supernova music festival on October 7 and murdered in captivity.

When the attack on the festival began, Ori, who was on a weekend break from the army, and his friend Tomer decided to flee, and they both managed to get away from the site of the rave and the Hamas attack.

But Ori decided that he had to go back and try and save the three friends he had met just a day earlier: Maya and Itay Regev and Omer Shem Tov – ignoring pleas from his friends not to return to the site of the festival.

He managed to find them, and together the four tried to escape, but ran into terrorists who opened fire on them, wounding Ori, Itay and Maya and ultimately kidnapping all four of them. Maya and Itay were freed during the ceasefire in November 2023, and Omer was freed in February 2025.

“Ori, it’s because of you that I’m here,” Shem Tov wrote on social media a few days after he finally returned home, saying that Ori “arrived with a bright light and incredible energy,” and later “appeared like an angel” to save them.

After 11 months of captivity, Ori was murdered by his captors on August 29, 2024, alongside Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alex Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Eden Yerushalmi. Their bodies were retrieved by the IDF two days later from a tunnel in south Gaza.

He was buried on September 1, 2024 on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. He is survived by his parents, Elchanan and Einav, his siblings Yitzhak, David, Aharon and Hodaya, and his girlfriend, Liel.

Ori was raised in an ultra-Orthodox home in Jerusalem, the oldest of five children. He lived in the capital’s Ramot neighborhood and later in the nearby West Bank settlement of Givat Ze’ev.

He attended a yeshiva high school in Afula, but ultimately decided to leave the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle, according to an online eulogy. In August 2018 he enlisted in the IDF and served first in the C4I (telecommunications) Corps, then later in the Givati Brigade before becoming a signals officer in the Paratroopers Brigade.

His loved ones said he planned to one day study electrical engineering, loved being out in nature, surfing, playing music and cooking. His family said Ori loved coffee so much that it was almost a hobby – preparing, discussing and sipping the brew were among his favorite pastimes.

Ori and his girlfriend, Liel, were getting serious and had plans to see apartments together just after the festival.

“Ori was a wonderful boy, my support, my best friend, a boy who always saw others before himself – first the person next to him, and only then himself,” his mother, Einav, told Haaretz. “His commanders said that he never looked at his soldiers as a commander, but as equals.”

His father, Elchanan, told The Times of Israel in an interview in March 2025 that he wasn’t surprised by his son’s bravery.

“His instinct was to help other people,” he said. “I would always say to him, ‘What, the whole world rests on your shoulders? The whole army? You’re the only one in the army?’ He said, ‘Dad, I have strength and ability and if they turn to me, that means they’re missing one of those, and I can fill in. That’s what I do.’”

Elchanan said Ori’s decision to leave observant Judaism didn’t impact their relationship: “All my children are my children, no matter what decisions they make.” And he supported his choice to join the IDF: “Ori wanted to be in the army; he didn’t see anything else. He said that was his career, his way of serving the Jewish people.”

Ori, he said, was “a person who gave of himself. He saw the other before he saw himself. He would tell me that he knew how to take care of himself… I’m sure he’s smiling from above. I just hope I’m doing what he wants.”

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