Staff Sgt. Yaad Ben Yaakov, 20: Golani soldier with a beaming smile
Killed battling the Hamas invasion of the Nahal Oz IDF outpost on Oct. 7
Staff Sgt. Yaad Ben Yaakov, 20, a Golani Brigade soldier from Petah Tikva, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.
Yaad was based at the Nahal Oz IDF outpost next to the border, and with the start of the rocket fire, he was ordered to head toward the border in an armored personnel carrier to repel the invading terrorists, according to an IDF eulogy. The APC was hit by an anti-tank missile, however the soldiers continued to fight and killed many terrorists. The effort failed in pushing back the terrorists entirely.
After more than an hour of battle, the APC returned to the Nahal Oz outpost, and the soldiers exited to engage in a gun battle with a group of terrorists at the entrance to the base. Yaad and several of his comrades were shot dead there in the gunfight. His family found out about his death in a video circulating on social media showing his body lying on the ground outside the base.
Yaad was buried on October 12 in Petah Tikva. He is survived by his parents, Lihi and Yuval, and his older siblings Dor, Aviv, Stav and Idit.
Raised mostly in Petah Tikva, he excelled in his studies and was known among his friends for his beaming smile. He started learning to play the guitar a few months before he was killed, and wanted to pursue a musical path, his mother said. He was a devoted soccer fan, obsessed with Real Madrid but also cheering on Maccabi Petah Tikva, especially after his close friend, Hadar Fuchs, joined the team as a player.
Hadar told a local sports site, “Yaad was the person with the most beautiful smile I knew. He simply brought his joy with him and instilled it in others. If I’d see him when I was feeling down or a little sad, within 30 seconds he’d pull me out of a funk and make me smile. He was just a happy kid who helped anyone who asked. He was there for all of his friends and that’s something special just to him. He had an incredible heart.”
Between Yaad’s time in the army and Hadar’s soccer career, they didn’t see each other that often, said Hadar, although Yaad was slated to soon complete his mandatory service. Yaad “always wanted to be a combat soldier, to be in Golani and to protect the State of Israel. All our friends supported him and told him to go for it and that we were relying on him. He protected the State of Israel until October 7 and there sadly he completed his job.”
His mother, Lihi, told the Kan public broadcaster that “my Yaad was warm, very intelligent, excellent, kind, very social — he had many friends and everyone loved him. He was simply an angel, an angel in life and an angel in death.”
Her youngest, she said, she raised him largely as a single parent, “and on the one hand he was very caring and he would help me financially even when he was a soldier, but on the other hand he would lie on the couch and watch TV and say, ‘Mom I want to cuddle.’ He would rest on me and embrace me — he was just a wonderful, wonderful kid.”
In April, Lihi told a local news site that she was “happy that he was a combat soldier and I was so proud when he enlisted in Golani. Yaad was a good soldier, who did everything he was supposed to.”
Contemplating the family’s first Passover without him, she said, was unfathomable, as normally on Seder night he “was funny, would tell jokes, he’d also tease, but with a smile and a hug and a kiss… We’ll miss him so much.”