He made his friends laugh in the heart of the inferno: Sgt. Itay Yehuda OBM fought bravely until he fell
On the 32nd birthday of Rinat Yehuda, she received the most precious gift of all, weighing 938 grams: her son, Itay. “He was a smiling child, a child who loved life,” she recalls wistfully. “He always admired me, always loved me, he was always my lover. He loved to go out, to have fun, to make everyone laugh, to tell everyone jokes.”
Itay grew up in Rishon LeZion and became a teenager who lit up every room he entered, yet at the heart of his radiant personality beat the heart of an artist and the spirit of a fighter.
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‘Let the world be good and without wars’
As early as fifth grade, in an innocent school video, Itay expressed a deep vision of peace: “I would change the world so everyone would be good people, so they would not fight and there would be no wars.” Those words echo today with chilling pain, as it becomes clear that the same child who asked for peace fell in the harshest war the country has known.
Alongside his aspiration for a better world, Itay discovered the world of art. In high school he became a gifted painter. “Even after three weeks of coming back exhausted from a heavy operational line and activities, he would put his gear aside and take two buses to his painting teacher in Tel Aviv to practice,” his brother says. “Just before the war, Itay painted three paintings that personally stunned us and hinted at the outbreak of the war and at our tragedy. The first painting was a butterfly with two iron swords. In the second painting he drew a Namer, the vehicle in which he fell. As for the third painting, which he did not finish, only during the shiva did we realize it was a dead person.”
Following the purple beret
Itay admired his older brother Omer. Their bond was so deep that young Itay wanted to be a replica of his brother, from the same shoes and clothes to the same military path. Omer recalls: “He saw me coming home with the uniform and the purple beret of Givati and said, ‘That’s what I’m going to be.’” The peak moment of that bond came at the end of Itay’s beret march, when he stood strong and proud at the end of the grueling route. Omer was the one who placed his own purple beret on his head, the one that had accompanied him throughout his service. It was a passing of the baton of bravery and family, a moment of pride that cannot be put into words.
He fought bravely
On October 7, Itay was on regular leave, but he did not hesitate for a moment. He put on his uniform even before being called to his unit. He fought bravely in Kfar Aza, went house to house and cleared them of terrorists to save families. In his last conversation with his mother, moments before the ground entry into Gaza, he displayed his characteristic humor. When she anxiously asked whether they were going in, he laughed and replied: “Mom, I’m traveling abroad. You figure it out.”
He entered Gaza driven by purpose, promising to take care of himself. On October 31, inside a Namer in the northern part of the Strip, the force was hit by an anti-tank missile. “Their Namer took a direct hit from an anti-tank missile,” Omer says. “The driver who survived told us that seconds before the explosion, Itay still managed to tell a joke and everyone laughed. That’s how he died, with a smile on his lips, making his friends laugh in the heart of the inferno. That was Itay. He always cared that others would feel good, that there would be joy.”
The charred letter found in the wreckage
Amid the wreckage of the Namer, a letter Itay wrote minutes before entering was found. Although it was partially burned, the words that remained say it all: “I do not regret for a moment that I enlisted in a combat unit, and this is the best thing I have done in my life... Thank you for raising me and educating me to be who I am.”
Itay fell two and a half weeks before his 21st birthday. He left behind hundreds of paintings that preserve his talent. His family commemorates him through exhibitions of his works, a friendship corner at his school and a Torah scroll written in his memory. “It is important for me to say that everyone should know that Itay was born a hero and he also died a hero,” his mother Rinat says. “A hero of Israel.”
Itay Yehuda, son of Rinat and Ofer, fell on the 16th of Cheshvan, 5784, October 31, 2023. He was 21 when he fell.
May his memory be a blessing.
Sergeant
Itay Yehuda OBM