The IDF announced Monday that Sgt. Yosef Yehuda Chirak, 22, a combat engineer with the 601st Battalion, was killed in action in northern Gaza.
He is the first Israeli soldier to fall since the launch of Operation Gideon’s Chariots. The incident in which he was killed is still under investigation, and further details have not yet been released.
Chirak was a resident of the Harasha outpost in the West Bank’s Binyamin region and the son-in-law of Yehuda Eliyahu, director-general of the Settlement Directorate in the Defense Ministry. He is survived by his wife Emunah, whom he married just seven months earlier, as well as his parents and three sisters.
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The Binyamin Regional Council issued a statement mourning his death. Council head Yisrael Gantz recalled, “Just a few months ago, we danced together at Yosef Yehuda’s wedding. Now we mourn his fall in battle. He went to fight in order to destroy the enemy, and together with his wife, built a home filled with devotion—now fully realized in his sacrifice.”
Gantz extended condolences to Eliyahu, the council’s former director-general, calling the loss of his son-in-law a “painful blow,” and vowed to honor Chirak’s memory by continuing the mission he died for.