Yonatan Tzur

IDF Lt. Col. Yonatan Tzur, 33, the commander of the Nahal Reconnaissance Battalion, was killed on October 7 after being called to battle against the Hamas terrorists invading the south of the country.

His wife Reshit Tzur told the Makor Rishon outlet that her husband, known in the army by his nickname “Barnish,” was “invincible.”

Together they were raising three children in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim.

“A big, strong man, a renaissance man,” Rashit said of her husband who built parts of their home, and its wooden furniture, with his own hands.

His aunt, Tzipi Moses told Makor Rishon that Yonatan was the first grandson of her parents and “the pride of the family.”

Wife Reshit told the Israel Hayom newspaper that her husband was an avid gardener and would take special care to tend to a particular grapevine he was growing each time he came home from the army.

“He was very proud of this garden,” she said, describing it as being like another wife to him. “After tending to the vine he would prepare a good steak on the barbecue” get himself a glass of wine and then work into the night on the rest of the garden which also features a bright blue Volkswagen Beatle, the very car he romanced her in before they were married.

“We toured the whole country with it, and it had no end of breakdowns,” Reshit recalled

“Behind the warrior hid a sensitive soul, who wrote poems” and conquered her heart.

“He had endless tenderness,” she said. “It is hard to understand that complexity. Yonatan was an extremely strong man. He could kill someone with one hand, but he was a soft man, sensitive and wise.”

Yonatan grew up in Yitzhar and then settled in Kedumim to raise his family.

When Hamas struck on October 7 he was immediately alerted and, as the commander of a specialized frontline unit, was directed to head south and take part in battles against the invading terrorists. The exact circumstances of his death were not immediately clear.

In a notification of his passing, the local Kedumim council described Yonatan as someone who “grew up loving the people and the country and saw in his role as a commander [in the army] a national mission to strengthen the Jewish people in its land.”
Source: The Times of Israel