Walking in Lior’s light: outstanding soldier Staff Sgt. Lior Raviv OBM
Staff Sgt. Lior Raviv, a Nahal Brigade fighter, fell on the 13th of Adar 5784, March 23, 2024. He was 21 at the time of his death. Lior was the youngest son of Sarit and Doron of Rishon LeZion and brother to Hila, Tal and Liel. “Lior was born to me after three girls,” says Sarit Raviv, Lior’s mother. “My mother-in-law had seven granddaughters and she had already given up, where’s the grandson? Then finally Lior was born. That was it, we had a prince for the family.”
Hila Hassid, Lior’s sister, shares: “He was such a cute, handsome kid, he was the family model from a young age. I really loved photographing him. I was always saying, ‘Come on, Lior, I’ll take your picture here, I’ll take your picture there.’”
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When they flew to visit their mother’s family in Finland, Lior would find his place in nature. “We traveled a lot to visit my mom’s family in Finland,” Hila says of their childhood. “There we would go on all kinds of adventures. That’s what I remember, Lior was a real nature kid.” Family came first for him: family dinners, visits to his grandmother and honoring his parents. His family describes a sensitive child, generous with praise, deeply appreciative, the kind of child every parent would wish for.
“When he started first grade, he went to a school near my mother’s house,” Doron Raviv, Lior’s father, recalls, in a story that shows the traits that were already part of him. “He would go to her for lunch, and I would come to pick him up, and then my mother says to me: ‘Doron, how wonderful Lior is. He finished eating, cleared his plate, washed it, cleaned the table, and the best part, he came over and kissed me on the cheek and said, “Grandma, thank you so much, what delicious food you cook.”’ And my mother just melted.” As a young teen, Lior joined the Bnei Akiva youth movement and made many friends there. Itamar Michaelov, one of his friends, shares his first memory of Lior: “In seventh grade I saw Lior for the first time. He was surrounded by friends, smiling, and he was simply glowing. You could see he was shy, but there was something about him that made me want to go up and talk to him. I was shy because I came alone, and he had more friends around him.”
At school, too, Lior was well-liked. “He was the perfect student,” Michaelov says, “the student every teacher loves, arriving like a Swiss watch in the morning, even a few minutes early.” Lior’s father shares the hobbies his son loved: “He loved sports and was in an archery club. He really loved visiting Grandpa and Grandma in Finland. With all the special things Finland had to offer, he always had a warm spot for trips in Israel, and we traveled a lot.”
'Surrounded by love, and always seeing the other'
“When he finished high school at the yeshiva, in the end-of-year booklet, it said: Lior Raviv, amazing,” his mother says proudly. “He was a good kid in every way, a good student and well behaved. I could be proud of him,” she says. After studying at the yeshiva, Lior decided to attend a pre-military academy in Keshet Yehuda in the Golan Heights. There, he prepared both mentally and physically for the army. “He got himself ready for the next, meaningful stage of his life,” his sister says, and his father adds that Lior said he wanted to arrive at the army more mature. “And indeed, that’s what happened,” he says.
Lior, who loved sports and wanted meaningful service, had strong personal aptitude and aimed high. “He really wanted to be a soldier. He reached the Nahal Brigade and was very happy,” his mother says. Doron, his father, describes the first Sabbath when he came to pick Lior up from base. “I come to pick him up that first Sabbath and I see him with a plastic bag he’s holding beside him. I tell him, ‘Put that in the back,’ and he answers, ‘No, it has glass, so it won’t break.’ I asked what it was and he said it was just a certificate, that they’d given them a certificate. Then he takes it out and I look, outstanding platoon soldier. And you’re hiding it? If I had gotten that, I’d be running down the street with it.”
'I’ll wear the big kippah, and nothing will hurt me'
“What kind of soldier comes home and says, ‘OK, tomorrow we’re up at 6 a.m., we’re going running?’” a friend recalls from the period when Lior wanted to get into even better shape and led his friends on early-morning runs. After his military service, Lior planned to travel and then study. But those plans did not come to pass.
On October 7, the family understood that Lior, like many others, was going to war. His father shares: “There was a really hard moment, he saw my wife was under pressure, so he told her: ‘Mom, I’ll wear the kippah you crocheted for me when I was little, this big kippah, and don’t worry, with this kippah nothing will hurt me.’” At 2 a.m., Lior’s parents received a phone call from him and he said he had been wounded and needed stitches. “Can you come pick me up?” he asked his father, who said: “I was happy. They gave him five days of sick leave, and I thought we’d have a few days to enjoy him.” But Lior, as always, told his father: He looked at me and said, “Dad, my friends are fighting in Gaza, and you want me to be at home?” He returned to fight the next day.
In the war, Lior served as the platoon commander’s radio operator. “He was always the first to enter a building, so he was first, and an example. A personal example through his behavior, he wasn’t afraid,” Lior’s mother says, adding the verse the family chose to engrave on his headstone: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.” His father adds: “He always projected confidence, that everything was under control, and I also knew him as someone who wasn’t reckless at all, very responsible.”
On the day he fell, his sister brought new life into the world
In the incident in which Lior was killed, the force was sweeping a multistory building near Shifa Hospital. On the seventh floor, a terrorist lay in ambush, hidden from Lior’s view, and shot him at close range. “On the Sabbath when we were told he was killed, I was spending Shabbat at my parents’ home with my husband and our older child, and I was 38 weeks pregnant,” Lior’s sister shares in pain. “By the end of that day, I gave birth to my second son. It turned out to be a different date, but yes, one soul went and one soul came.”
His mother says Lior had countless good qualities. “Everyone I met remembers him for the good, as if he brought light to his surroundings,” she says. “He influenced so many people, for example, someone came up to us and said how he always smiled and said hello, even though he didn’t know her personally.” Michaelov, Lior’s friend, says that since Lior fell, his goals have been to strengthen the family, be there for them, and commemorate Lior so that people will know who he was. Lior’s father says, “Friends from the army, from the company, from Nahal, have been with us throughout this entire period, and we’ve received a warm embrace from them. We discovered that Lior was a dominant figure in his company, and he became a role model.” Lior’s father shares, painfully, that exposure to the world of bereavement also means learning from others’ experience. “If there is something that eases the pain,” he says, “it’s commemoration, coming, telling and speaking. We try to do everything we can so people will know and understand what an amazing son we had. I feel fortunate that I was blessed with such a son. It’s important to me that all the people of Israel know who my son was.” Lior continues to light the way for his family, his friends and Nahal soldiers, with a light of giving, humility and love of the land.
May his memory be a blessing.
Staff Sergeant
Lior Raviv