Staff Sgt. (res.) Itay Nachmias was killed on October 7 while fighting terrorists who invaded southern Israel. Five months later, his mother, Galit, a longtime midwife at Soroka Medical Center, faced an unimaginable test of humanity — delivering the baby of Ismail Haniyeh’s niece, a relative of the Hamas leader.
“It felt like the world stopped,” Galit recalled. “For a moment, everything went black. Then I took a deep breath and reminded myself — this is my place, my job, my second home. No matter who’s in front of me, I will do my work faithfully.”
Itay grew up in Moshav Yesha, a small community in southern Israel near the Gaza border. From a young age, he spent hours in his father Oded’s garage, surrounded by the smell of oil and the sound of tools, taking apart motorcycles, ATVs, and engines just to see how they worked — and then rebuilding them, often better than before. “He had a creative mind and gifted hands,” Galit said. “He could build anything he imagined.”
His greatest project was an off-road buggy he built entirely on his own. With it, he dreamed of racing in the world-famous King of the Hammers, one of the toughest off-road competitions in the world, held each year in California’s desert.
Then came October 7. Itay, a soldier in the IDF’s multi-dimensional unit, left home early that morning to fight the terrorists who had invaded nearby communities and to help rescue civilians trapped in their burning homes. He was killed in battle before he could fulfill his dream of taking that buggy — the one he had poured his heart into — to the starting line.
Now, his father Oded is determined to make that dream come true in his son’s memory. He is leading an Israeli team called Itay’s Legacy to the same California desert where Itay had hoped to race. “He wanted to see that desert, to stand among the best drivers,” Oded said. “So we’ll go for him — with the Israeli flag and Itay’s photo beside us. That’s his legacy.”
While Oded prepares for the memorial race, Galit’s story of compassion and strength has become another part of her son’s legacy. “When I delivered that baby,” she said, “I felt Itay with me. As if he was saying: Mom, we choose life. We’ll defeat them — and we won’t let them take away our humanity.”
Galit believes that moment, painful as it was, symbolized everything her son stood for. “Itay chose to act with courage, with love for others,” she said. “That night in the delivery room, I tried to do the same. I wanted to prove to myself — and maybe to him — that even after everything we’ve lost, we still choose life. That’s the real victory.”
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