Maoz Morell

Staff Sgt. Maoz Morell, 22, a member of the Paratroopers Brigade who was injured February 15 during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip, succumbed to his wounds on February 19.

Described by his family as both devout and highly athletic, Morell decided to combine religious study with his army service and enrolled at the hesder yeshiva in Kfar Tapuah, enlisting as a paratrooper.

On February 20, hundreds came to Mount Herzl to see the late soldier laid to rest.

“Already from a young age, when you competed in ground combat in kung-fu, you would pin any opponent in a few seconds. Everyone admired you… Yesterday, your teammates came to visit you in the hospital and say goodbye to you. Each of them talked about your physical strength. They all said that you were the strongest on the team,” said his mother, Varda Morell, at the funeral.

Morell was born in the West Bank settlement of Talmon to Varda and Eitan, along with four other siblings, including well-known hilltop youth turned left-wing activist Dov Morell, who eulogized his brother online.

“Those who knew our family, but not Maoz, would probably be surprised to hear that we have a brother in the [Paratroopers] Patrol. We’re a family of nerds,” wrote his older brother. “You couldn’t catch me playing soccer without a PE teacher holding a gun to my head. But not Maoz.”

On the morning of October 7, Morell was on holiday. Upon hearing of Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel’s south, he went home to collect his equipment and rushed to the fighting underway in the Re’im area. That day marked the last time his family saw him until he was hospitalized, remaining mostly unconscious until his death.

The elder Morell sibling described his brother as a “writer and a warrior” who, even after enlisting in the army, “did not for a moment abandon Torah study.”

“Before the first entry into Gaza, families were given the chance to send things to soldiers. Maoz requested only a watch, camera, two copies of the Tanakh and a translation, so he wouldn’t miss out on his regular studies,” continued Dov Morell. “Every time he came home you would see him with a book in his hand, except when he collapsed from fatigue, of course.”

Morell’s parents recalled their son as a “source of strength” for their family during a rough patch.

“You were born during a difficult time in our family, we gave you the name Maoz [strength] so that you would be a source of strength for us, and what strength you have,” continued Morell’s mother at Har Herzl.

“Maoz, now that you have fallen, where will we get the strength we drew from you?” his father Eitan said.

Yisrael Gantz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council, eulogized Morell in a statement: “For a whole week Maoz lay between heaven and Earth, gradually separated from this world and from the country which he loved and fought for. His amazing family wrapped him in love until his soul returned to the Creator. We cry and mourn for a lovely young man, from a young and beautiful generation of Binyamin who leads with values, in character and on the battlefield.”

The same incident which fatally wounded Morell also killed another soldier, Staff Sgt. Rotem Sahar Hadar, and injured eight more troops.
Source: The Times of Israel