Staff Sgt. Tamir Nimrodi, 18: COGAT soldier’s goal was to help others

Staff Sgt. Tamir Nimrodi, 18, an Education Corps NCO in COGAT’s Coordination and Liaison Administration unit, from Nirit, was kidnapped from his army base on October 7 and slain in captivity. His body was returned to Israel in October 2025.

Tamir, whose job involved helping facilitate aid and movement in and out of Gaza, was stationed at his base next to the Erez Crossing that Saturday morning.

Terrorists stormed the base, killing Tamir’s comrades Staff Sgt. Or Malka, Sgt. Emil Samoylov and Cpl. Lidor Mekayes. Video later emerged of Tamir being kidnapped alive along with Sgt. Ron Sherman and Cpl. Nik Beizer, being marched to the gate of the base, barefoot in their pajamas.

His family also later found video of Tamir from that day being dragged through a gap in the border wall into Gaza. Tamir’s family never received any sign of life of him since he was kidnapped, and his fate was not confirmed until his body was returned to Israel more than two years later.

In mid-October 2023, Hamas claimed that Tamir had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, an assertion which was never verified by Israel and not reported by the media at the time. Ron and Nik were killed as the result of an Israeli airstrike in November 2023, and their bodies recovered by IDF troops a month later.

The IDF later assessed that Tamir was likely killed in an airstrike on October 9, 2023. Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, the IDF’s former hostage pointman, said in December 2025 that Nimrodi was the first captive to be killed in an IDF strike since the military “didn’t know he was there.”

He is survived by his parents, Alon and Herut, and his younger sisters Mika and Amit. He was buried in Kfar Saba on October 16, 2025, more than two years after he was killed.

Tamir grew up in Nirit, a small community in central Israel. His family said that from a young age he struggled in school, and was diagnosed with ADHD and sensory issues. In 7th grade he began studying at Beit Ekstein in nearby Kfar Malal, which specializes in students with special educational needs.

His family said Tamir loved astronomy and geology, and had spent years working on an in-depth family tree. They said he loved to collect things, and his room was filled with rocks, crystals and dinosaur teeth.

When it came time to enlist in the IDF, Tamir was given a “low profile” due to his ADHD, but he fought to raise it, and to be assigned to a role with meaning. His family said he blossomed while in the army, found a sense of mission and inner calm. A week before he was killed, they said, he had an interview for an officer’s course.

After he was abducted, his family found a note in his belongings listing his goals: “To help as many people as possible, to build a close social circle, not to hurt others.”

In an interview with the Haaretz newspaper in February 2025, his mother, Herut, said that in the army Tamir “had finally found his purpose, his meaning.”

“He took care of all the soldiers on the base, saw himself growing in the Education Corps, even went through interviews for officer training,” she said. “There is no greater gift for a mother than to see her child become a man – to watch him transform, like a caterpillar into a butterfly – and finally feel she can let go.”

Herut said Tamir loved to ride horses and saw himself continuing on the path of being an educator.

At his funeral, his younger sister, Amit, said: “I miss you, I miss when we’d stay awake until the middle of the night and talk about everything; I miss your hugs when you’d return from the army, and I miss the nights when I’d sleep in your room with you. Now I sleep there alone every night.”

She said that Tamir “fulfilled the role of a big brother perfectly. You always looked after me, every little thing, you’d prepare food for me in the middle of the night, you taught me everything I know.”

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