Staff Sgt. Itay Saadon, 21: Prolonged IDF service after Hamas attack

Staff Sgt. Itay Saadon, 21, was killed in combat in the northern Gaza Strip on November 2, 2023.

A tank commander in the 401st Armored Brigade’s 52nd Battalion, Saadon was slated for discharge this year on November 15. He had already bought plane tickets for a vacation with his friends in Berlin before Hamas’s devastating attack on October 7 upended his plans to go abroad.

Against his parents’ wishes, Saadon canceled his flight to Europe and instead volunteered to stay at his base that Saturday.

“How many times have I told him, ‘We don’t volunteer on Shabbat for the army,’” tweeted Itay’s father Eyal when his son went into battle on October 7. “I thought, at least he’s in the north, far from all the chaos.”

Eyal Saadon continued to tweet about his son as the war continued into its first month, trying to envision a future where they would reunite as a family.

“I save every picture and video of a tank published by an IDF spokesperson,” he tweeted on October 31. “I’m waiting for him to come back, for us to sit together and for him to tell us that here is his tank and here is their shell. In the meantime, I keep everything inside and keep myself as strong as possible.”

Two days later, Itay fell in combat in the northern Gaza Strip.

Eyal tweeted the day of his son’s death: “I’m sitting next to my ex-wife with our daughter who returned from a vacation. A knock on the door, I tense up, my ex-wife goes to the door, she glances and says, ‘No, it’s a mistake.’ A few moments and we realize the tension is killing us and we both cry together. We calm down, assure ourselves that he will return and his plan abroad will still play out.”

Although his family moved to Tel Aviv three years ago, the slain soldier was laid to rest in Misgav, the regional council for Har Halutz, a small village in the Galilee where Saadon grew up. The funeral took place on November 5.

“His biggest dream was to be a pilot,” his mother Liat said at her son’s funeral. “He was due to be released on November 15, he was planning to go to Canada to learn to fly. He was busy fulfilling his dream from the age of five. I can’t stop thinking that he is in heaven. From age five he had a dream, and he was not able to fulfill it.”

His mother recalled the last conversation she had with her son in Kiryat Gat, a week before his death.

“He was a tank commander like his grandfather, who fought in the Yom Kippur War. We laughed that he would be like grandfather. That he would continue his legacy and take us to the places where he served and fought,” she said.

“Itay said that he wanted to continue to live there and raise his children there [in Har Halutz],” his father said in his eulogy.

Read more Those We Have Lost stories here.