Sgt. Maj. (res.) Liran Almosnino, 42: Shepherd and ‘man of nature’
Killed battling the Hamas invasion of Kibbutz Holit on October 7
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Liran Mones Almosnino, 42, from Kmehin, a reservist with the LOTAR counter-terror regional Nitzana team, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.
Liran was home with his family the morning of the attack in Kmehin, a small community in the western Negev not far from the border with Egypt.
When he got word of the Hamas invasion, he and other members of the rapid-response counter-terrorism team based in the Nitzana bloc of communities on the Egypt border got into a van and headed to join the fighting. They went first to Yated, near the southern Gaza border, where they battled Hamas gunmen and where Cpt. (res.) Iftach Gorny was killed.
Later Liran and his comrades continued to Kibbutz Holit, which had been invaded by Hamas gunmen. Liran was shot dead while trying to battle the onslaught.
He was buried on October 12 in Kadesh Barnea (Nitzanei Sinai). He is survived by his wife, Efrat, their five children, Guy, Geva, Peleg, Tene and Matar, his parents, Sari and Michael and his siblings Shahar and Hen.
Born in Hatzor, a kibbutz near Ashdod, Liran grew up in a military family with a pilot father whose work took him around the world. They lived for a period in the United States, before later settling in Reut, near Modiin, where Liran attended high school.
He and his wife Efrat had a lifelong dream of raising their family on a farm and living off the land. In 2016 they settled in Kmehin where they raised a flock of sheep together and also started a tourist business taking people on jeep tours of the desert and sandboarding.
In an interview with Ynet in March 2023 about their rural life, Liran said he wanted to live in the desert “because I had a dream. We had a business for rental equipment for events, but we sold it and came to Kmehim because I wanted to raise sheep… Why specifically sheep? I don’t know, I just really love the animal.”
Liran also did regular reserve duty in the IDF, was an active volunteer with a local group providing protection against the stealing of animals from farms and was a member of the LOTAR counter-terror group for the communities next to the Nitzana border crossing with Egypt.
His mother, Sari, wrote on Facebook about his final moments, “When you were called up, put on your uniform and went to do what you knew how to do — defend your home, defend this country you loved so much.”
“Liran, your loss has opened a deep hole in my heart,” she added. “The pain is endless and unimaginable… I am proud of you my heroic son. Proud and thankful for the privilege of being your mother.”
His wife, Efrat, told the Mako news site that “Liran was the kid who was in all the after-school scouting troops, who learned all the knots and the bindings, who knew the trees and the types of rocks and knew how people used to live.”
Liran was “a child of nature in every meaning of the word, who grew up to be a man of nature full of magic. He was always ready to help, even at the expense of the kids at home, the first to jump into action and assist, to bring, to organize or to rescue, even without being asked, always ready for any task.”
Her husband, she said, never censored his words. He said “everything he felt, for good and bad and spoke with no filters. Even if we didn’t always understand him, you could never be mad at him because ultimately we all loved him and knew that this is how he was. He was embarrassed by the spotlight, out of modesty, but when he was teaching and guiding people he spoke like a great man.”
