Staff Sgt. Omri Niv Firshtein, 20: Basketball fan and devoted brother

Staff Sgt. Omri Niv Firshtein, 20, a Home Front Command soldier from Givatayim, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of the Zikim IDF base.

The morning of the attack, Omri was stationed on base at the training base of the Home Front Command’s Search And Rescue Brigade in Zikim, where he worked as a combat driver. With the start of the attack, Omri told his family that he’d jumped out of bed and headed to the bomb shelters.

When the commanders on base realized they were under attack by Hamas gunmen, they ordered the senior staffers to replace the trainees at the guard posts and sent all the new enlistees to shelter. Though Omri was not serving in a combat position, he took a trainee’s weapon and took up position at the front of the base, according to an IDF eulogy.

For 45 minutes, Omri battled against the Hamas invasion of the base and helped to evacuate the wounded before he was shot and killed shortly before 8:15 a.m. Ultimately, seven soldiers on the base that day were slain — Omri and Maj. Adir Abudi, Cpt. Or Moses, Lt. Adar Ben Simon, 2nd Lt. Yannai Kaminka, Staff Sgt. Eden Alon Levy and Cpl. Neria Aharon Nagari, the only trainee to be killed in Zikim.

Omri was buried in Tel Aviv on October 10. He is survived by his three parents, Orly, Michal and Kobi, and his two younger sisters, Maya and Mika.

His gravestone is the first in IDF history to be engraved with the names of three parents after he and his two younger sisters were born as part of a shared parenting arrangement between his two mothers and his father.

Born and raised in Givatayim, spending weekends and holidays in Rishon Lezion, Omri was a sporty kid, taking part in judo, volleyball, soccer and tennis before focusing on his one true love, basketball, his loved ones said. He’d get up in the night to watch NBA games and refused to give up on playing even when COVID shut down his regular league. He also loved music, learning to play the guitar, and was also a youth leader and counselor.

In August 2021 he enlisted and was placed in the Home Front Command’s Search and Rescue Brigade, serving for a year and a half in the West Bank. His commanders sent him to a squad commander’s course, but a health issue in his back forced him to drop out and he moved to work on the training base at Zikim in June 2023.

“Through conversations with people who came to console us, we heard that Omri danced all the time and made everyone laugh,” his mother, Orly, the deputy mayor of Givatayim, told Haaretz. “He was the heart of the company. He really loved the new recruits and had many conversations about issues relating to being an officer with Adir, the company commander.”

“Maybe because I also come from a military background, and was in command and instructional positions for many years, Omri shared a great deal with me about how to develop resilience among soldiers and improve their ability to cope with crises,” she added.

Omri’s younger sister, Maya, wrote on Instagram, “It is hard for me to imagine the world without you.”

“Without the one person who can really make me listen to him, without your advice, without you sitting with me for hours while I cry and explaining to me that I’m not the one who’s wrong. How can I live without my funny brother, my pure and sensitive brother?”

“The brother anyone would ask for, and I’m not just saying that,” she continued. “How can I go on without my brother, my guardian, who would tell me what he would and wouldn’t let me do, and we’d fight over it for hours. How can I go on without my partner in food, who loved exactly what I love, how could we have a barbecue without you manning the grill?”

Maya wrote that she continues to imagine “you opening my bedroom door with a boom to scare me, in your uniform, already barefoot after you threw down your bag, running to me and jumping on me. You’d annoy me for an hour until I get annoyed at you. I promise you that if you do it again, I won’t get annoyed, Omri. I promise.”

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