Staff Sgt. Yuval Ben Yakov, 21: Armored Corps soldier jumped into battle
Killed battling the Hamas invasion of the Yiftah IDF outpost next to Zikim on October 7
Staff Sgt. Yuval Ben Yakov, 21, a soldier in the 7th Armored Brigade, from Kibbutz Kfar Menahem, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.
Yuval was stationed at the Yiftah IDF outpost next to Zikim when the Hamas attack began. His girlfriend, Roni, who was stationed on the same base, told Ynet that they were both awakened by the sirens and rockets, and met in the on-base bomb shelter.
Roni was barefoot, and Yuval gave her his flip flops so she wouldn’t hurt her feet, she said. After about half an hour, Yuval was called to the gate of the base to provide backup against the terror infiltration. There, barefoot and in pajamas, he battled against the terrorists and was slain in the firefight along with Cpl. Naama Bony, Staff Sgt. Ido Harush, Sgt. Ilay Bar Sadeh, Lt. Yoav Malayev and Sgt. Nathanel Young.
Yuval was buried on October 9 in Kfar Menahem. He is survived by his parents, Haim (Vitaly) and Emilia, and his older sister Ethel.
Born in Jerusalem, when Yuval was two his family moved overseas as part of his mother’s role as a Jewish Agency emissary and his father’s role as director-general of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, posted in Russia. When he was 7, he, his mother and sister moved back to Israel and settled in Kfar Menahem in the south, according to an IDF eulogy. As a young child, he underwent heart surgery, but never let it hold him back in life, his family said.
Yuval loved music and dancing at parties, and as a teen started working at McDonald’s on weekends, eventually being promoted to deputy manager. Serving a significant combat role was important to Yuval, and when he was told that being overweight would hold him back, he pushed off his enlistment date and lost 33kg within 3 months with the help of a personal trainer, ultimately enlisting in January 2021 and being placed in the 77th Battalion of the 7th Armored Brigade, according to a local kibbutz eulogy. His mandatory army service was slated to end on October 18, but Yuval had agreed to stay on for four additional months at the request of his battalion commander.
He met his girlfriend, Roni, while serving together on the same base in 2023, and they quickly became a couple. Roni wrote online that “over the past six months you were the closest person to me, my partner, the friend I told everything to, the friend I fell in love with and wanted to be as close to as possible.”
“Thank you, my prince,” she added. “Thank you that I got to experience your love in the best way, thank you for always being there for me, thank you for choosing me to be yours, thank you for protecting me until the last moment. You are mine and I am yours for life.”
In an interview with Channel 12 news, his sister, Ethel, said that Yuval “would always tell me, ‘You’re my sister, I love you and I’ll take care of you.’ That’s the thought I wake up with every day once I understand that the whole thing wasn’t just a nightmare.”
His grandmother said it was impossible to comprehend “that I won’t see him again, that he won’t walk in here with the most beautiful smile in the world.”
In a local eulogy, his mother, Emilia described him as a “sweet and easy baby.” The family’s return to Israel at age 7 was hard, she said, but Yuval eventually learned the language and made friends. He “enjoyed the group in the kibbutz, and started to go to local club events, connect to the counselors and join the shared activities.”
He didn’t love being in a school setting, she said, but applied himself when he needed to in order to pass all of his exams. He thrived in the army she said, and when he would come home on breaks, “he’d give up on his sleep even when he came home exhausted in favor of meeting with his friends, who were so important to him, and he always returned from their gatherings happy and joyous.”
Emilia asked to remember her son as “golden-haired and blue-eyed, smart and strong, a sensitive and straightforward guy.”