Tamir Barak

Sgt. Tamir Barak, 19, a Combat Engineering Corps soldier from Kibbutz Nir Eliyahu, was killed by Hamas on October 22 while conducting an operation to search for bodies just over the Gaza border.

He was killed when Hamas fired an anti-tank guided missile at an Israeli tank and engineering vehicle.

Barak is survived by his parents, Almog and Golan, his sister Sagi and brother Yogev. Barak’s uncle, Cpl. Benny Barak, was killed while fighting in the Golan Heights in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. After his death, his parents decided to have another child, and named him Golan — Tamir’s father.

Tamir’s uncle, Dudi, wrote on Facebook: “They say that lightining [Barak in Hebrew] doesn’t strike twice in the same place. It seems that’s a mistake. It hit us — and oh how it hit us. Tamir, my nephew, a charming boy with an eternal smile. An enormous heartbreak.”

His stepmother, Dafi Barazani, wrote that his “smile and his joy for life accompanied him until the horrible moment he was killed. So young, and so beautiful.”

A fellow member of Kibbutz Nir Eliyahu, Keren Weinberg, said she could not comprehend that Barak was killed after “just this morning you posted a video to TikTok with your comrade — with a huge smile and laughing.” Now, she wrote, “the nightmare has come true.”
Source: The Times of Israel