Staff Sgt. Yoni Golan, 21: Tank commander who was an identical twin

Staff Sgt. Yonatan “Yoni” Golan, 21, a tank commander in the 7th Armored Brigade, from Yehud, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of the Nahal Oz IDF outpost.

He was stationed at Nahal Oz that Saturday morning, and was awoken by the rocket fire which launched the attack. Not long after, his battalion commander called to alert him of the Hamas invasion, telling him to “run to the tanks.”

Yoni and his comrades jumped into action, and for several hours used the tank to battle the cross-border attack in the areas of Nahal Oz and Nirim. At a certain point, they were called back to the Nahal Oz army post in order to help counter the Hamas invasion on the hard-hit base.

There the tank was hit by RPG fire and the tank crew jumped out to race for the on-site bomb shelter, with Yoni protecting them. His comrade Sgt. Or Avital was killed, and when Yoni went to retrieve his body, he was also shot and killed.

He was buried on October 12 in Yehud. He is survived by his father, Ran, stepmother, Adi, and his siblings Maya, Dor, Lihi and his identical twin brother Yotam. Yoni’s mother, Hila, died when he and Yotam were 4.

Born in the Neve Monosson neighborhood of Yehud outside Tel Aviv, Yoni lived until age 5 on Air Force bases, growing up with a father who was a military pilot. Afterward, he grew up in Yehud, where he was active in the local scout troop, was a talented basketball player and was also very musical, and could be found playing the guitar during most of his spare time

After finishing high school, Yoni decided to attend the Minsharim Kalu pre-army academy in Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael — where he met his close friend, Staff Sgt. Ido Harush, who was killed while fighting Hamas in the Yiftah IDF outpost on October 7.

In August 2021 he enlisted in the IDF, and while he had explored joining the Air Force, he decided to go to the Armored Corps, believing that it was where he was needed most. He rose through the ranks until he became a tank commander.

His father, Ran, told the Kan public broadcaster that Yoni “always took care of those around him, whether it was in basketball, or in the scouts or later as a tank commander, he was always worried about those nearby, also those who were invisible or who were having a hard time.”

And on that dark Saturday, Ran said, “Yoni did what Yoni knew how to do — he came back to save his soldiers, to rescue them from the tank, he protected his deputy company commander, and his gunner so they could get to safety. I have no doubt that he wasn’t afraid for a moment. He did what he knew and always wanted to do — to protect his friends.”

He loved astronomy as a kid, his father said, and “he was always enchanted by the stars… we both really wanted to reach the stars. He’s in the stars now. He is our star.”

Yoni’s twin brother, Yotam, told an IDF site news article that the pair were so identical as kids, they had to always be dressed in different colors: “I was dressed in warm colors, and Yoni in cool colors. And that really matched our personalities, I was hot-headed and restless, while Yoni was calm and carefree.”

Yotam said the pair were “as identical as you could be. When you’re a kid, you think it’s shocking, and when you grow up there’s a moment where it changes. When you understand that it’s the best thing that happened to you.” For them, he said, it was when they stopped sharing a bedroom — “all we had wanted was to separate, and suddenly we wanted to go back together.”

Until they went to separate pre-military academies after high school, he said, the longest they’d ever been apart was a week. When he was informed that Yoni had been killed, Yotam said he “fell to the ground and fell apart. It’s the worst feeling I’ve ever had in life, I don’t think I’ll ever feel anything that comes close to it.”

At his funeral, “When they lowered his coffin into the ground, I felt like half of me was going with it… To lose a twin is to lose yourself. Every breath I took, every thought I had, was together with him.”

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