Aschalwu Sama

Staff Sgt. Aschalwu Sama, 20, from Petah Tikva, was an infantry soldier in the Nahal Brigade’s 932nd Battalion who was wounded in battle on November 14 and died two weeks later, on December 2.

He is survived by his parents and four younger brothers. His funeral was held on December 3 at the Segula Cemetery in Petah Tikva.

According to his friends, Sama, who went by the nickname Assi, was “the heart of the company,” Haaretz reported. Days before his death, he told his battalion commander: “I’m your flack jacket.”

“I’m willing to take a bullet so that you can lead the battalion to victory,” he said.

According to Maariv, Sama was critically injured after warning fellow soldiers to step away from a tunnel they had just discovered.

“Move away from here, it’s dangerous here,” officers recounted him saying before the explosion occurred.

Sama was remembered by his loved ones for his dimpled smile which never faded — seen in a photo of him circulating in the media following his death.

Sama, who moved to Israel in 2007 with his family, had previously appeared in an Israeli newspaper — back in 2009, amid coverage of Israeli schools that balked at admitting recent Ethiopian immigrants.

“Many of my friends don’t know where they’ll go to school,” Sama, then 6 years old, told the Haaretz daily. “I want to learn, I am ashamed a little that I still haven’t begun to learn. But I’d really to to be like everyone else.”

Sama was eventually accepted into Mosenson Youth Village, an agricultural boarding school in Hod Hasharon geared towards new immigrants.

Sama had “a very big heart, who always had a smile on his face… If he saw someone in a bad mood, he would always perk his friend up. He was very important to his class,” a former teacher told Haaretz.

Another former teacher and principal of the youth village, Chaya Balhasan, said he was the “salt of the earth. Assi was determined to be recruited for a meaningful combat service. He dreamed of being a fighter. He loved humanity and loved the country.”

He was “a mischievous boy with two dimples, full of joy for life and love of his country,” she said, adding, “In his yearbook, he wrote a sentence that he would always say: ‘Conquer your fears.'”

In a post eulogizing him, Sama’s school friends said he was a “beloved student and friend among the buddies and teaching staff.”

“He always helped and supported his friends. A sentence Assi believed and acted upon was, ‘Be stronger than your excuse.'”
Source: The Times of Israel