{"id":298929,"date":"2026-02-19T09:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T09:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/298929\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T09:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T09:43:08","slug":"we-hope-he-will-be-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/298929\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We hope he will be part"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hadas, the mother of Sgt. Ofri Yafe, a reconnaissance paratrooper who was killed <\/a>late Tuesday night by IDF fire in Khan Younis, said she received a message Thursday morning from one of his fellow soldiers who is operating alongside the snipers, including the one that fired the shot that killed her son. <\/p>\n

She described how the soldier asked to apologize, and said: \u201cI wrote to him to pass on our love to the sniper who shot him, and that it is enough that Ofri\u2019s life was cut short \u2014 we don\u2019t want the poor sniper\u2019s soul to be harmed. Does that make sense? Is there no value to life? It\u2019s all so arbitrary. Why do we need this entry into Gaza? Truly. I\u2019m not angry at the army.\u201d<\/p>\n

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3 View gallery <\/p>\n

\"\u05d4\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05d5<\/a>\"\u05d4\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05d5<\/p>\n

Hadas and Yiftach Yafe, parents of fallen soldier Ofri Yafe <\/p>\n

(Photo: Avihu Shapira)<\/p>\n

Hadas read on Army Radio the letter that the soldier serving with the snipers wrote: \u201cHow are you, Hadas? First of all, I want to say that I share in your immense sorrow. And in my own. I\u2019m sending strength to you, to Yiftah, to all the siblings and to Roni. I know you may not agree to accept this, but I feel the need to apologize in my name and on behalf of the entire sniper team, and on behalf of the one who fired \u2014 a huge apology. Of course we\u2019ll be there for him. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be able to attend the funeral in person today. I hope my parents and friends back home will come to pay Ofri their last respects on our behalf. I would be very glad to come when we get out, to talk and share memories. We\u2019re here for you, for whatever you need.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mother of the killed soldier said she is not angry at the sniper who killed Ofri in a case of friendly fire. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe sniper is my son just like Ofri, and I will hug him and ask him to go on with his life,” she said. “I don\u2019t have a gram of anger toward him or toward the sniper team, it\u2019s truly so absurd. The sniper is expected to come today and we will hear him, and we hope he will be part of our family. We have three other children, and we promised them that same day that we would remain a happy family. He has many friends, and Roni, his girlfriend \u2014 they will be with us forever. We are not alone in this struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

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3 View gallery <\/p>\n

\"\u05e1\u05de"\u05e8<\/a>\"\u05e1\u05de"\u05e8<\/p>\n

Sgt. Ofri Yafe, a reconnaissance paratrooper <\/p>\n

(Photo: Courtesy of the family)<\/p>\n

Later in the interview, Hadas noted that her son entered Gaza even though he was supposed to undergo knee surgery after being injured about a year and a half ago. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll the time he was in the army I disconnected from the radio and the media,” she said. “It was too hard for me to watch the politics and the distorted decision-making. I don\u2019t have the slightest trace of anger toward him or toward the poor snipers. I pity them for having to be in this distorted situation. It\u2019s so absurd, truly. It\u2019s inconceivable. There was a boy, and suddenly he\u2019s gone \u2014 just like that. All Ofri\u2019s life we worried about him; he lived on the edge. He lived life at a million miles an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the IDF spokesperson cleared for publication that Yafe, from Moshav Hayogev in the Jezreel Valley, was killed in the Khan Younis area due to a case of mistaken identification. An initial investigation found that the soldier was hit by small-arms fire from IDF forces engaged in engineering operations to demolish structures. The incident occurred during nighttime activity in eastern Khan Younis, in the area of outposts along the buffer zone near the border. Paratrooper forces had arrived in the sector about a week earlier.<\/p>\n

After the tragic incident was made public, Hadas and Yiftah, Ofri\u2019s parents, said in a statement: \u201cWe are angry at the state<\/a>, which puts the best of our sons, the salt of the earth, into illogical and unnecessary situations after all our hostages have returned home.\u201d<\/p>\n

3 View gallery <\/p>\n

\"\u05e1\u05de"\u05e8<\/a>\"\u05e1\u05de"\u05e8<\/p>\n

‘We want to believe and hope that he is the last fallen soldier’ <\/p>\n

(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Ofri was a magical child, a yellow chick full of light. He devoured life every single moment, loved his family, his friends from the moshav, his friends from his gap year and his teammates from the reconnaissance unit. He was a child who gave of himself completely, always the first to volunteer and give without asking for anything in return,\u201d they also said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no anger toward the army,\u201d the parents emphasized, directing their criticism at political policy: \u201cWe love everyone and embrace everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the great privilege of being his parents,” Hadas said. “His motto was \u2018Live life,\u2019 and he did that in 21 years. He was a person of abundance, generosity and kindness. He had many friends. He had a girlfriend for five years, and she is broken now. We want to believe and hope that he is the last fallen soldier. It is important for us to clarify that we are in no way angry with the sniper who fired. We take a small measure of comfort in having donated his organs. Maybe he will improve someone else\u2019s quality of life or save someone from death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ofri\u2019s funeral will be held Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. in the military section of the cemetery in Moshav Hayogev.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hadas, the mother of Sgt. Ofri Yafe, a reconnaissance paratrooper who was killed late Tuesday night by IDF…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-298929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}