The son of Rivka-Ike and Isaiah. He was born on September 3, 1991 in Jerusalem. Itai, Shira’s twin brother, was born five minutes after his sister, a few days before Rosh Hashana. Itai was a beautiful boy. He grew up in a warm and loving family atmosphere and was very attached to his family. Every Friday night the extended family, uncles and cousins of the mother family, turned to the dining table in his grandmother’s house. He studied and was educated at the “Yoni Netanyahu” elementary school in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem and continued his studies in junior high school and high school in Jules Braunschweig, where he volunteered to collect food for the needy and the elderly. His twin sister, Shira, felt the need to protect me, especially during middle school and high school, both of whom had similar interests and a similar character, each with a rich inner world, and the understanding and love between them was quiet, almost without words. The two of them used to build a LEGO together, shared a collection of cards and loved to play in the cars They were sleeping in a bunk bed, with me upstairs and singing under him, watching the television with pleasure, “Scrubs” and “Friends” were my favorite comedies, and while he watched them he held his hand in a bowl of pasta and ate and laughed out loud. The comedies, he was interested in various programs on the History Channel, and he expanded his knowledge, mainly in films of action, war and history. Shira talks about the similarity that was discovered between them at random in several cases. For example, they always chose the same seat on buses. At the last Passover Seder night in Itai’s life, a conversation was held at the end of the meal. When asked “Where are you now and where do you want to see yourself?” Shira said she wanted to see herself far away, and in her heart she dreamed of New Zealand, and with me he replied without thinking twice: “In New Zealand.” Itai and Shira studied English with a private teacher from the third grade. Thanks to his high intelligence and perseverance, he spoke to me, read and wrote in English on a mother tongue level. On a family trip to Canada, while on the ferry, he had a fluent English conversation with me for about half an hour with a stranger he met. When he was preparing to recruit children for the IDF, the family traveled to London, where he once again marveled at his language skills and guided his family on a trip, with a bookworm and read almost every book he had in his possession. , And Harry Potter was read in English as soon as every volume was published, and he kept reading his favorite books over and over again, remembering the precise location of selected passages that spoke to him. Along with watching movies and reading, sports is also considered one of his main hobbies: Itai was a member of Hapoel Jerusalem Youth, and played basketball too Friday with the regular team, he and his father were subscribed to the Hapoel Jerusalem games, but he retained his great admiration for NBA basketball teams, and he knew everything about them, including the results of the games, the names of the players and the achievements of the teams. During his many years of work, he found time to spend time with his friends, and he was a loyal and devoted friend of the group that marched together from junior high school, where Omer and his friends visited him, the three played in exxboxes and roared with computer games and strategy games. especially. Due to his high sensitivity to others and to himself and thanks to his kindness, he listened attentively to his friends and was a good friend of the groupRuthia of poetry. As a smart and mature adult, with many interests, he formed good and stable social relationships with me and spoke naturally with many people he met. But in fact he was a very quiet and introverted boy, not a talker. He often preferred to listen to Israeli music, to the songs of Ehud Banai, Berry Sakharof, and others, and at the same time to converge in himself and in his thoughts. He uploaded 6,000 songs to the MP3-MP4 player and listened to music at headphones at such a high volume that his mother kept asking him to lower. Itai was a tall, muscular man, thanks to training in the gym, a smile on his face and his laughter rolling. He had an excellent sense of technique and knew how to fix and fix things at home. On a trip with his friends to Cyprus for recruitment, he surprised me with special courage and was the only one of the gang to leap in Benji. Despite all this, he was still shy, humble and humble. Since he loved history, he also read military historical literature, especially about the Armored Corps. His interest in this began before he was drafted and continued during his military service. Because he was an ethical guy, full of motivation and connected to the state, he wanted to serve in one of the most combat units and contribute as much as he could. On November 29, 2009, he enlisted in the IDF and was assigned to serve in the Armored Corps in Battalion 52 of the 401rd Brigade in the Golan Heights, and due to his vision problems he was assigned a low medical profile for combat service. He fought from the moment of his induction to raise the profile in order to move to an elite combat unit ). After a year he managed to raise the profile to 97, but decided to stay in Battalion 401, where he served as a Merkava tank driver and later as a combat medic. Itai shared his experiences with the army and armored corps. When he went to a paramedics course, his parents and sister took great pride in his achievements and successes. Itai loved his military service, his unit and the roles he filled. He served as a medic in the “HaBokim” Battalion 52 in the Central Command, in the form of a member of the Central Command, The ironworker of the steel division, Tomer Wildman, who joined the service, said that Itai’s motto was: “There are no unimportant problems, each and every one of his important problems, and as long as they are important to him, they are important.” On September 13, 2011, he was twenty years old when he fell, and he was laid to rest at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem His parents and sister. “With me, my beautiful boy,” he eulogized his mother, “you have made a handsome lad, a terrific smile. “On their last birthday, Shira and I exchanged gifts, but both did not have time to enjoy their gifts, and after his death she discovered that ten days before his fall, on their birthday, he listened to the band she loved, Beetles. “In a letter of condolence to the family, Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz wrote:” Itai’s commanders say that he was committed to his job and that he filled it out of a desire for perfection, dedication and professionalism. He was described as a wise and pleasant man, who showed bad and brotherhood toward his friends, because of all these and more, he appreciated and loved the And chips it. Aching heart over the death of me prematurely. I am confident that the figure will be accompanied by the commanders and his friends. ” “Itai was a quiet, very smart guy who loved the company very much. He had a great deal of knowledge and experience in his role as a non-commissioned officer, a guy who took pains to take care of his friends with dedication and commitment.” Who walks and does notReturns “is a poem written in his memory Hamutal:” flower blooms / and flower Nobel. / Like a person who came into the world / and a man from whom he walks. // A sun shines and a sun sets, like a person born / and a person who dies. But there is no justice in the world, because when the sun sets, the next day it returns. “A man who died will never return to the world.” To commemorate him, the playground in front of Itai’s house in the Arnona neighborhood of Jerusalem, adjacent to the Ruth Baram promenade, was renamed “Gan Itay.” His uncle, Amnon Yakanti, a sculptor and an artist, a gallery in his memory called “Studio Itai.” A monument made of granite stone that was brought from Sinai, overlooking the plain and Tel Gezer, was erected near Karmei Yosef.
