First Sgt. Yaakov Krasniansky, 23: Cop showed ‘heroism of spirit’
Killed on October 7 while defending Kibbutz Nahal Oz from Hamas terrorists
First Sgt. Shlomo Yaakov Krasniansky, 23, an officer in an undercover Border Police unit who grew up in Jerusalem, was killed on October 7 while battling Hamas near the Gaza border.
He is survived by his parents, Zvia and Avraham, and his three siblings Miriam, Shmuel and Or. He was buried in Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on October 10.
Krasniansky, who left the ultra-Orthodox world at age 17, was killed while fighting Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Nahal Oz.
Though serving in the security services is considered a taboo in the Haredi world, Krasniansky’s mother, Zvia told Channel 13 news that what was good for their late son had been good for them and that he always did things with his whole heart.
He had shown “heroism of the spirit and the soul.”
Zvia later told 103M Radio that her son had “a love of Israel that could not be explained, he was a bright and humble guy. Yaakov never spoke about where he was stationed or what he was doing.”
She said that she was “happy that Yaakov got to where he did. A man who was killed in the sanctity of God, and saved people with his body, saved his friends. Yaakov reached the highest place he could, and I thank God for that.”
Krasniansky and nine other soldiers fought alongside the Kibbutz Nahal Oz security team, killing many of the terrorists, and helping to block their advance until reinforcements arrived.
Soldiers who survived later told the Krasniansky family that their son had led the fighters, and that after he was killed, comrades had driven a protected vehicle around and around the body until it could be evacuated.
When Amir Tibon left his house that Saturday, he saw the body in the road and set out to find out whose it was.
“Then one day, really late at night, I got a message from Shmuel Krasniansky, who, I later understood, was a brother of Yaakov, who fought and defended us,” Tibon recalled.
“He said, ‘My brother was killed in the battle for Nahal Oz,’ and I said to him, ‘I absolutely must come and visit you.'”
Tibon drove to the family’s Jerusalem home and told them, “What a fighter! You don’t understand how many he killed, how many he saved, how many kibbutz families are alive today thanks to him and his friends.”
Tibon said the meeting was one of the most moving experiences of his life. “There I was, a left-wing kibbutznik, a journalist for [the left-of-center] Haaretz, sitting in front of Yaakov’s mother, a Haredi woman, and I’m telling her, ‘Thank you for your hero son, who fought for us and saved us and paid with his life.'”
“I so wanted to hug her, but I don’t know what the [modesty] rules are,” he went on. “And then she just gave me her hands, and we held hands, and we hugged, and cried together, and I told her the truth — that thanks to her son, and his heroic friends, we can hug our daughters before we go to sleep.”
