Staff Sgt. Dolev Amouyal, 21: Golani soldier believed in habitual joy
Killed fighting near the Nahal Oz IDF outpost on October 7
Staff Sgt. Dolev Amouyal, 21, a soldier in the Golani Brigade from Netanya, was killed by a Hamas rocket near the Nahal Oz IDF outpost on October 7.
With the start of the Hamas invasion down south, Dolev, who was home for the weekend, convinced his father to drive him to Ashdod so he could head toward the Nahal Oz outpost, where he was normally stationed. In Ashdod he caught a ride to go and join the fighting, and first reached the nearby Paga outpost where he helped to evacuate those wounded.
Later in the day, he was heading in a jeep toward Nahal Oz to join his comrades, when a rocket hit the vehicle and a piece of shrapnel pierced his heart, killing him, his family said.
Just before he was killed, his father said, Dolev wrote messages to his parents, his girlfriend and his grandmother telling him that he loved them. Dolev, who had enlisted in the IDF in March 2021, was killed two weeks before he was slated to be released.
He was buried on October 12 in Netanya. He is survived by his parents, Yaniv and Yael, and his brother Or.
Mere days before he was killed, Dolev changed his WhatsApp status to, “He who makes joy a habit, never falls into depression,” which his family said summed up the way he saw the world. They put the sentence on his gravestone.
On a memorial page for Dolev, his mother Yael wrote that he “loved everyone, had a light in his eyes, always united people around him, and helped everyone.”
Speaking to a local news site, Yael said she could barely talk about Dolev, “I can’t even say out loud that my wonderful, special boy is no longer here.”
“It’s unfathomable that our Dolev, who loved everyone, who had light in his eyes, he was always surrounded by people, who helped everyone — his friends, his family, the elderly who needed help on the bus, at the crosswalk with bags — who was always there, will never give me another hug again.”
His father Yaniv told the Kan public broadcaster that “he was a very unique kid. Handsome, full of light, happy and smiling — there’s no photo in which he isn’t smiling.”
“Everyone who met him loved him from the first moment,” added Yaniv. “He was a leader from birth. His loss is enormous and has crushed all of us. We are a very united family, he was the oldest son and the oldest grandson.”
Not long before he was killed, Yaniv said he managed to speak to Dolev one last time on the phone, “and during that conversation, he told me, ‘Dad, you need to go be with Mom and with Or. You need to give each other strength.'”