Sgt. Amir Lavi, 19: Talented guitarist spread music among his friends

Sgt. Amir Lavi, 19, a soldier in the Nahal Brigade’s 50th Battalion, from Jerusalem, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of the southern Israel.

Stationed on the Sufa IDF outpost near Gaza, Amir and his comrades were on duty the morning of the attack. When the massive rocket fire began, they got into the armored personnel carriers and began preparing to return mortar fire, according to a memorial site.

Soon they heard nearby gunfire, and realized that there was a terrorist invasion and got out of the APCs and split up to defend the outpost’s rear gate from the attack. Amir and others were wounded, and decided to head inside the outpost, and holed up inside the on-base cafeteria, which was also the bomb shelter.

A group of Hamas terrorists blew up the gate and stormed the room, killing Amir and two of his comrades — Sgt. Nahman Dekel and Staff Sgt. Tal Levy — and three other Nahal soldiers, Staff Sgt. Amit Most, Staff Sgt. Gali Shakotai and Staff Sgt. Ofir Melman.

Amir was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on October 12. He is survived by his parents, Rachel and Elad, and his younger sister, Tamar.

Rachel and Elad shared that two months before he was killed, Amir created a playlist for his own funeral full of songs about living. They said they were horrified at first by the initiative, but later realized how important it was to him.

Rachel told the Kan public broadcaster that Amir had told her, “If I’m gone, don’t sit around crying all day. I want you to keep listening to music.”

Amir was a talented artist and musician who studied at the prestigious Israel Arts and Science Academy for high school. After his death, Israeli singer Yoni Bloch used one of his sketches for his new single.

Amir’s family described him as a “beloved son and a wonderful brother, grandson, and cousin.”

Describing the sort of brother Amir was on a memorial Instagram page, Tamar shared a memory of when the two were sleeping at their grandparents’ house and she woke up scared during the night.

“You hugged me so tight until I fell asleep, and all I want is another hug like that,” she wrote. “The values and things you taught me are still with me, and you are the biggest inspiration in my life.”

Tamar also wrote that Amir had a lot of friends who were like siblings to him and that they had been there to support her since he died.

“Amir changed me completely,” his girlfriend, Yuval, wrote, adding that he “taught me how to love and how to feel loved, made me happy and made me believe that someone actually loves me and thinks I’m beautiful, which is something no one had ever done before.”

On a memorial page set up for Amir by his family, his friends all described how he introduced them to music they loved and how much knowledge he had about the music he shared with them.

“I think Amir was a big reason why our group of friends managed to form and stay so close. We’re all stressed and competitive physicists who probably would have lost it at each other a long time ago, but Amir knew how to lighten the mood. [He knew how to] have some fun with music and speakers in one hand, and good beer in the other, and everything is fine,” wrote his friend, Libby.

Another friend, Stav, wrote that he was “the most welcoming guy you would ever meet.”

“Amir was such a good friend that your friends would meet him and be jealous for a moment that he wasn’t their friend too. But then the jealousy would pass because he would connect with them too, and even if you left, he would stay with them, pour them a glass of whiskey and get to know them,” she wrote.

Tamar, another friend of Amir’s, said that he “was the best person I had ever met in the purest sense of the word” who “always did the right thing.”

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