Yuval Rabia

Yuval and Noam Rabia, 33 and 30, brothers from the small southern moshav of Yesha, were murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7 at the Psyduck music festival near Kibbutz Nirim.

Noy Zaafrani, Yuval’s fiance, was also murdered in the attack on the party.

Noam, whose friends called him Nomzy, was remembered as a unique soul, the life of the party, a funny guy who loved to dance. Yuval was memorialized as a talented artist and musician who was creative and gifted across so many different fields.

“Noam was a pure soul, intelligent, a dancer, funny and sensitive,” said their father, Yosef, in comments to Ynet, adding that he had planned to start studying programming later this year.

Yuval, he said, “was an artist, a painter, a sculptor and a composer,” who was recording music at the festival. “Yuval was funny as hell, the heart of his friend group, his friends would always come visit.” Yosef said that Yuval was in the middle of a statue that he never got to complete, “now my task is to finish his work.”

Dor Ben-Elisha, their cousin, wrote on Facebook about the two brothers.

“How much we laughed together, how much we talked about hip hop and music, just this past chag [Jewish holiday] you told me that they invited you to play at the festival and you would do it because you were an artist in your soul,” he wrote of Yuval.

“Witty to an incomprehensible extent, a talented painter, a rapper — oh how we rapped together,” he recalled.

And of Noam, he wrote: “My Nomzy… what a unique guy you were, even though you didn’t always have it easy, you were always happy and always made people happy everywhere. At family weddings I would get up and dance just because of you and because of your incredible energy.”

“What incredible hugs you would give, how much I loved hugging you,” he added. “What a huge heart you had, we laughed until it hurt, we ate good food together, we loved a lot and we hurt together.”

Another cousin, Yahel Ben-Elisha, recalled their shared memories and mourned their loss in a Facebook post.

“It’s strange for me to admit that together with the eternal sadness that has landed on me, I am also happy,” he wrote. “I am happy that I even had the privilege to be part of your world, and to draw so much inspiration, warmth, love and knowledge from you. I’m happy that you were my cousins with such pure hearts, always making everyone laugh, always beloved, talented in every fucking thing you touched.”

Ben-Elisha said that he felt a need to write about his cousins “so the whole world and his wife will know what rare and once-in-a-lifetime people our world has lost.”
Source: The Times of Israel