Family Women Mourning a Fallen Soldier

Stand for Israel  |  March 13, 2024

After the more than 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed on October 7, many family members are left to grieve those lost and these fallen heroes—like the women from Yosef Malachi Guedalia’s family. This young IDF soldier was killed while trying to save lives at one of the heavily attack kibbutzim, reports The Jerusalem Post:

A bodycam video shows Yosef rescuing a wounded man at 1:12 p.m. After that, they took him out to a helicopter to be sent to hospital for treatment. The Guedalias have been in contact with the wounded man; Yosef’s father David met him the day he was released from the hospital. “If Yosef and his team had come two minutes later, I wouldn’t be here now,” he said.

“He was a warrior, telling other people what to do – in a voice I had never heard before. It was shocking, but amazing – that’s what he was doing in the last hour of his life.” (He was killed about an hour after that video was taken.) “But he had been doing things like that for a year already – the definition of a hero.”

Although he was among the first killed on that fateful Saturday, the family wasn’t informed until Monday. Yosef’s oldest brother Asher, also in a special combat unit, had been fighting nearby at Re’im, where many young people were killed while celebrating life at the Supernova festival with music and dance. He also thought that Yosef had been sent to the North but heard rumors otherwise and then figured out the worst. Asher asked his commanders to tell him when the officers were going to break the news to his family so he could go with them – and he wanted them to find out as soon as possible.