Staff Sgt. Aner Shapiro, 22: Unarmed, he fended off 7 grenades

Staff Sgt. Aner Elyakim Shapiro, 22, an unarmed off-duty soldier in the Nahal Brigade’s elite reconnaissance unit, from Jerusalem, was slain while attending the Supernova music festival on October 7.

Aner attended the rave next to the Gaza border with a group of friends from Jerusalem, including his close childhood friend, Hersh Goldberg-Polin. When the rocket fire began, they left via car and stopped on the side of the road to seek safety in a roadside bomb shelter next to Kibbutz Re’im.

Aner and his friends were among the last people to squeeze inside the shelter, where they soon realized that terrorists were gathering outside to attack. Aner positioned himself at the entrance to the shelter, and in video that later emerged from a dashcam, he can be seen catching and throwing back seven grenades before the eighth exploded and killed him.

Ultimately, of the 27 people who were holed up inside the shelter, only seven emerged alive. Aner and many others, including Ayelet Arnin, Laor Abramov, Tamar Samet and Segev Kizhner were slain inside the shelter. Four people were kidnapped — Alon Ohel, Eliya Cohen, Or Levy — whose wife, Eynav, was murdered there — and Aner’s close friend Hersh, who was murdered in captivity close to a year later.

“Aner Shapiro… saved our lives and he deserves a a medal of honor for being an angel who guarded us,” wrote attack survivor Agam in a Facebook post. Agam, who was herself injured as she crouched inside the doorless shelter, said that when the terrorists first approached, Aner declared his intention to block the grenade attacks and rallied others to help him.

Aner was buried on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl on October 13. He is survived by his parents, Shira and Moshe, and his six younger siblings, Talia, Ayala, Ariel, Tamara, Alma and Hila.

He grew up in the Arnona neighborhood of Jerusalem, as the oldest of seven in a religious family, attending the Himmelfarb school in the capital before enlisting in the IDF. He had dreamed of serving in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit but was wounded twice during tryouts, ultimately joining the Nahal Brigade and eventually serving in the Orev company in its special forces unit.

His great-grandfather was Haim Moshe Shapiro, a former Israeli lawmaker and minister who was a signatory of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Shapiro was seriously injured when a Jewish immigrant, Moshe Dwek, threw a grenade into the Knesset plenum hall in 1957.

As a young child, Aner was always creating, writing stories, illustrating them, playing the piano and eventually discovered a love for rap and hip-hop. He had composed and produced five songs before he was killed, and a sixth song, “Hatred of Brothers,” was posthumously produced with the help of rapper and producer Avery G., and with rapper Shaanan Streett of Hadag Nachash, who wrote and recorded a final verse.

“He had a personality of leadership and a love of people,” his father, Moshe, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview. “Aner was born 22 years ago, a Jerusalem boy with a great love for music and painting. Until the age of 18, he was a painter; and on the other hand, he really loved sports and fitness.”

“He had a developed sense of justice and love for people. If he saw someone not being properly taken care of, he would get angry and go to their aid,” Moshe added. “He really liked to sit with people and talk to them. He wrote songs, composed and sang, and left hundreds of written texts. Dealing with pressing issues in Israeli society is what kept him busy.”

His mother, Shira, told Ma’ariv a year after he was killed that “Aner is still here, I’m his mother even more so now. People can keep living after death in a very powerful way, and that’s what happened with Aner. His breakthrough into the public consciousness in light of what happened is just one element. But his music, his personality are also alive with us, very much so. Despite him physically not being here.”

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