Ofir Shoshani

Staff Sgt. Ofir Shoshani, 20, a commander at the Mifrasit Base in the Intelligence Corps, was slain inside her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7 by Hamas terrorists.

She is survived by her parents, Mira and Shai, and her brothers Omri and Amit. She was buried on October 15 in the Beersheba military cemetery.

Her brother Omri told Ynet that Ofir was in her apartment in the kibbutz’s youth section when Hamas terrorists invaded. He said she was on the phone with her parents “when they heard terrorists enter her apartment and shoot her.” She told them she had been shot in the arm and her father got his weapon and drove toward her apartment, as terrorists repeatedly opened fire on him as he drove.

Omri said that his father continued to dodge gunfire, and as he approached he saw many members of the kibbutz’s local security team dead on the ground, and took one of their weapons. He tried again to head to her apartment but was shot in the arm, and forced to crawl away and hide for hours until he was rescued. By the time he got to Ofir’s apartment, it was too late, and they found her dead in her bed.

“My sister was the most beautiful girl in the world,” Omri said. “She always smiled and affected everyone around her. We were friends, but not the way I wanted.”

Shoshani was close friends with Yam Goldstein, who was slain alongside her father on October 7 while the rest of her family was taken hostage. Their friends from high school got tattoos of two fairies to immortalize the two young women, who dressed up together as Tinkerbell on Purim in 10th grade.

Their friend Gaya told Ynet that “Yam and Ofir were the heart of our class, two girls with common sense. If I needed to know what to do, how to do it, where to go, they directed me. Ofir would always laugh that she could never get rid of Yam, they were the best of friends… Now Ofir is probably telling Yam: ‘What, you followed me here too?'”

Liat Eti Peretz wrote on Instagram that Ofir was a “beautiful and perfect girl with a captivating smile who I was privileged to know. At every meeting with Ofir, I was blown away by her intelligence. I always said that we would be hearing much more about this girl.”

Her grandmother, Jenny Hampel, wrote on Facebook that this “horrendous war took from me my oldest and most dear granddaughter. I have no idea how to be comforted. A 20-year-old bud that never had the time to develop into a flower. I love you so much, my heart is burning.”

Omri noted that he too got a tattoo in memory of his sister — a dancing woman that she had tattooed on her as well — to which he added wings and a halo: “It was clear to me that I would get this tattoo, that something of her would stay with me,” he said. “If she heard that, she would laugh at me and say I was copying her.”
Source: The Times of Israel