Warrant Officer Ziv Dado, 36: Career officer was 'the first to help'

Warrant Officer Ziv Dado, 36, a logistics supervisor in the Golani Brigade’s 51st Battalion, from Rehovot, was killed battling Hamas on October 7 and his body kidnapped to Gaza.

The morning of the attack, Ziv set out from home to head to the front lines, and to join his forces at the Kissufim IDF outpost. According to an IDF eulogy, as he approached the area, he encountered burned-out cars on the side of the road, and sent photos to one of his soldiers, to warn them. As he approached the Mefalsim Junction, he encountered a cell of terrorists and was killed in an exchange of fire.

Ziv was considered missing for two weeks, until the IDF declared him dead, and a funeral was held on October 25. IDF troops recovered his remains during an operation on December 12, 2024. His burial was completed two days later on December 14, 2024, at the military cemetery in Holon.

His body was retrieved alongside that of Eden Zecharya, who was kidnapped from the Supernova music festival. In the operation to recover their bodies, Master Sgt. (res.) Gal Meir Eisenkot and Master Sgt. (res.) Eyal Meir Berkowitz were killed.

He is survived by his wife, Stav, their five-month-old daughter, Maya, and his two brothers, Oded and Aviv. His father, Jakob, died when he was 9 and his mother, Janet, died a year before he was killed.

Born and raised in Afula, Ziv decided as a teen that he wanted to enlist in the Golani Brigade and did so when he began his military service in February 2006. He was “an army man in every fiber of his being, loved and admired by his commanders, comrades and subordinates, and the beating heart of the 51st Battalion — his second home,” reads the IDF eulogy. “He served in the battalion for 18 years and his name preceded him as ‘the man who arranges everything,’ who solved every logistics problem… everything with modesty and humility.”

In 2012, he met Stav, who was serving as a logistics officer in the same battalion, and they started seriously dating. They wed in 2018, settling in Rishon Lezion before moving to Rehovot. In May 2023, just a few months before Ziv was killed, their daughter, Maya, was born.

At his second funeral, his widow, Stav, said she wanted the world to know “what an incredible person you were, you were always the first to help, always on the side of giving. You are a hero of Israel and everyone needs to know that.”

“I miss you with every moment and every breath,” she added. “I am pained by our future that was cut short in the middle. Maya started daycare this week and I just keep thinking that if you were here you would hold my hand and tell me it was all going to be OK… You were my whole world, my other half, we were connected by our souls and we understood each other just by looking at each other without needing to speak.”

Stav promised that “Maya will be raised on our love and be brought up with all your values of dedication to others, diligence and love. She will be so proud of you the way that I am so proud of you.”