Sagie Mor, a resident of the Golan Heights community of Kela Alon, paid with his life last week when he dived in to save his son from drowning off the coast of Thailand. Now his family and friends in the community in northern Golan are preparing for his burial upon his return to Israel and are engaged in a painful fight demanding that Sagie — a man of the land and landscape — be laid to rest in the village he loved and nurtured, not in a distant cemetery.
“Sagie is scheduled to be buried on Monday,” said Ortal Brovin-Hen, a friend of the family. “But the community where he worked as the landscape manager, and cultivated every parcel of ground, has no cemetery.”
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Sagie Mor served hundreds of days in the reserves - and saved up for vacation
(Photo: Courtesy of the family)
Sagie, who served 700 days in the village’s emergency response unit, after October 7, was a pillar of the community. “The family and residents are mounting a fight for his burial in the village,” she explained. She said there is a precedent: “During the war a soldier from Moshav Odem was killed and a cemetery was opened there for him.”
The struggle is not only about the place of burial, but about creating a place of eternity and honor for the deceased of the community, which is entering an era of growth and development.
“Unlike a moshav where the lands belong to the moshav and it can decide upon them, the lands of Kela Alon and the nearby Ramat Trump are owned by the Israel Land Authority (RMI), and we need their approval for allocating land," Moti Cohen, a member of the council of Kela Alon, explained to ynet. "To my understanding, we’ve passed all the hurdles and won recognition and the agreement of the Religious Services Ministry of the need for a regional cemetery here that will provide an answer, and we are meeting today with the regional council head Uriel Kallner and all the bureaucratic parties in hope that we get a positive answer.”
Currently about 150 families live in Kela Alon and the community is facing expansion and absorption of 50 additional families. In the young nearby settlement Ramat Trump live 26 families today, and it too is planning growth and expansion as a mixed secular‑religious community.
“Sagie was extremely significant and touched so many people. In the big pain following his death and the understanding that his family and he himself deserve to be buried in our settlement, we gathered on Wednesday all the residents — which hasn’t happened here for 15 years. We are all here united for Sagie and the final honor he and the family deserve. We want his orphan children to be able to come and visit their father by bike or scooter, that their dad will be near them — and not an hour’s drive away to the settlement Bnei Yehuda 60 km from here.”
3 View gallery
Sagie More and his children; he saved his son from drowning in Thailand
(Photo: Courtesy of the family)
Yigal Guy Eliezer, Sagie’s neighbor, wrote a touching Facebook post that went viral, describing Sagie as “a real person, with the face and voice and scent of the earth.”
Eliezer described Sagie as a hard worker and creator in agriculture, landscaping and installing solar panels.
“When the war broke out he enlisted, as always, and did more than 700 days of reserve service,” Eliezer wrote.
“Two days before that flight to Thailand he was released from reserve duty, after he saved every shekel to take the family on a vacation they deserved.”
Sagie’s heroism was revealed in full force last Wednesday, on a beach at Koh Phangan.
“When his son was swept into the sea — Sagie had no question at all,” Eliezer described with pain. “He jumped into the water, rescued his son to the shore, and the raging sea took him. The son came home thanks to him. Sagie did not.”
Eliezer compared Shagai’s act to the Biblical binding of Isaac.
“In the binding of Isaac the father almost sacrifices his son. In Sagie’s binding he gave his life so that his son would live. This is the father’s heroism — not a figure from legends — of a neighbor, a person, who did the simplest and greatest thing in the world.”
Residents are calling on the head of the Golan Regional Council Uriel Kallner, and anyone who can assist, to ensure Sagie is buried in northern Golan, near his home, close to his wife Inbal and their four children.
“This is not just a logistical question, it is a question of honor, of belonging, of basic justice toward a person who gave of himself without calculation,” Eliezer summed up.
“This is the minimum we as a society and as a community can do for him now. May we know how to give space to this grief, to care for Inbal and the four children and turn Sagie’s memory into a force for good here in the Golan, in the reality he so served and built with his two hands. May his memory be blessed.”