“Still waters run deep”: The story of the late Staff Sgt. Roy Dawy, the fighter who followed his heart
From the moment Roy Dawy was born on Nov. 5, 2002, his life story was marked by a struggle for existence against slim odds. His mother, Betty, or Batya, recalls the complicated moments in the operating room during the C-section.
“It was my third birth, a planned C-section. We arrived for the operation, which was very long and complicated. The doctor said: ‘Ma’am, in your next birth you must be careful. You won’t have this again. It is a danger to you and to the fetus.’ As he spoke, my life flashed before my eyes, and I recited the Psalm verse "Adonai Ro'i Lo Echsar" (The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want). And that became his name, Roy.”
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Roy grew into a modest, gentle and principled young man who always acted from a place of inner quiet and extraordinary strength. “I call Roy ‘still waters run deep,’” Betty says. “Roy did everything quietly, with goodness.”
He channeled his natural gentleness into the world of judo, a martial art he chose precisely because it was not violent and was based on respect. His father, Arieh, recalls the long drives to every competition across the country, just to see his son for a few moments on the mat.
“I would drive all the way to Herzliya for a few seconds just to see him, and then come back,” he says. “I would tell him: ‘Roy, make the fight a little longer so I can enjoy it more.’ Today, the house is filled with his medals.”
A deep human bond
Beyond his athletic achievements, however, what defined Roy more than anything was the deep human connection he had with those around him. His sister Eden describes a bond stronger than that between ordinary siblings. “Everyone thinks I lost a little brother, but for me it was a little like losing a son,” she says.
She describes a young man for whom good manners and love of others were a daily way of life, not merely a slogan. “Evil speech simply meant nothing to him. It passed right over him.”
His brother Tomer says that although it was not easy at first to adjust to a new sibling, Roy quickly became “an inseparable part of my life.”
The turning point in Roy’s life came when he was 12, when his fate became intertwined with that of the late Staff Sgt. Liel Gidoni, who fell in Operation Protective Edge. Roy discovered chilling coincidences: They were born on the same date, studied with the same teacher at school and supported the same basketball team. “He really took Liel into his heart,” his mother says. Roy decided to follow Liel’s path to the Givati Brigade, and as Tomer describes it: “Just as people followed Liel with love, today they follow Roy.”
In his military service, Roy stood out as a commander who saw the person behind the uniform. He wanted to become a squad commander for recruits so he could instill his values from the very beginning. In one of the moving recordings left behind, Roy can be heard asking another commander to buy snacks and treats for one of his soldiers who was staying on base for Shabbat. “Don’t tell him it was me,” he is heard asking, with his characteristic modesty. His concern for others was quiet, almost secretive, but always present.
Oct. 31, 2023, became the day the sky fell on the Dawy family. As Roy fell in battle in the northern Gaza Strip, his brother Tomer was involved in a serious motorcycle accident and was hospitalized. Arieh, who was in the emergency room with Tomer, suddenly saw the name “Roy” flash across the news screen under the chilling headline listing the fallen soldiers from the reconnaissance unit. “I dried up,” he recalls in pain. “At 8 o’clock, there was a knock on my door. I saw three officers in front of me. I told them: ‘Don’t tell me anything. I know what you want to tell me.’”
'This is the Land of Israel for which I am doing this'
Since that moment, grief has accompanied the family at every step. Betty returned to work, but on her way she stops every morning at the cemetery at Mount Herzl. “People ask me, ‘Why do you go there every morning?’ So I have an answer: Do you say good morning to your children in the morning? It’s the same thing. I also want to say good morning to my son.”
Arieh describes the tears that come every Friday on the way back from synagogue, when he understands again and again that he is returning to a Shabbat table where one chair is missing.
But Roy, in his final words, left his family and the entire people of Israel a testament of resilience and hope. In a letter he wrote at the beginning of the war, after the fierce fighting in Kfar Aza, he addressed his family in a spirit of optimism, surprising for a young man of his age.
“If I am to die, then only like this. The smile rises at every possible moment. To see everyone who is here, this is the Land of Israel for which I am doing this.” He ended the letter with three words that became a compass for his family: “And only grow stronger from everything.”
“This is what he would have wanted to leave for the world,” Eden says. “That we all know how to rise from this fracture, as one people, one heart, and to build and be built.”
The late Roy Dawy, the boy with blue eyes and a huge heart, fell as a hero, but he lives in the hearts of all those who choose, like him, to put on a smile and see the good in others.
Staff Sgt. Roy Dawy, of the Givati Brigade, fell on Oct. 31, 2023. He was 20.
May his memory be a blessing.
Staff Sergeant
Roy Dawy