Ben Raya and Yossi. Born on 28.8.1975 in Kibbutz Alumim in the western Negev, to parents who are members of the founding nucleus of the kibbutz. My father was named after his grandfather, Avraham (Eugen) Michaelis, a member of the various kibbutzim who immigrated from Germany. He founded and managed the religious youth village near Kfar Hasidim and after his father’s friend, Gadi Yehudai, who fell in the Yom Kippur War. My father was the third of four sons, brother to Iki and Gilad, the older ones, and to David, who was born seven years later. From his youth, my father wanted to understand and know everything, a child who keeps asking, a “bookworm” who reads nonstop. He studied at the Daat Elementary School in Kibbutz Sa’ad and developed into a wide-ranging, wide-ranging youth, surrounded by children and a lover of sports, especially long runs and swimming. In every matter, he always insisted, and often wondered and asked. In 1990 the family moved to Kiryat Tivon, and my father was in 10th grade at the religious youth village near Kfar Hasidim. His desire to return to the company of farm people led him to study at the regional school at Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, where he lived in his parents’ home, Henya and Yigal, who received him with love, and lived there for two happy years. My father, who had many doubts about faith, chose to postpone his enlistment and studied for a short period at the yeshiva of the religious kibbutz in Maale Gilboa. When he did not find his place, he moved to the pre-military academy in Etir in the Hebron hills. At the end of March 1993, Avi enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces, and it was clear to him that he would go to a combat unit. My father, who had never liked rigid frames, confronted the army with questions and demanded explanations, and even though he was punished, he did not bend over and stand on his own. At the same time, he successfully completed all assignments and was accepted into an officer’s course, which he was forced to give up due to a medical problem. Despite the difficult and dangerous service, my father insisted on returning to his unit stationed in Lebanon, his teammates and the close friends that had been created during the service. A certificate of appreciation and appreciation received from the brigade commander reveals something about the period of his service – his participation in thwarting an incident of terrorist activity in the Lebanon region – on “the destruction of terrorists with determination, courage and striving for contact while adhering to the mission in the struggle for the security of the northern communities.” In October 1995, Avi wrote from Lebanon: “Again and again I find myself amazed by the power of the landscape in this place … Everything here is a kind of illusion … It is very hard for me to put my finger on my precise feeling when I am here, But it does not bother me at all, it is part of sadness and longing, so it accompanies me all the time but not directly, but in a kind of individual stealth, so it appears when you are alone with yourself And the intention is not to feel physical, but when I stop for a moment and think about the house or the friends, or about a love story that I have not yet begun … “Military service deepened his desire to realize the dream And Matthew, traveling the world, studying philosophy and literature and engage in writing. My father continued to read literature and poetry, and always went to Lebanon with new books in his backpack. In the recent immigration to Lebanon, from which he did not return, he took with him new books, including the book “All Life Before Him” by Roman Gary. In fact, this was the last period of his service in Lebanon, after which he was supposed to go on leave. On the evening of 28 February 1997, the helicopter disaster occurred when two Yasur helicopters collided over Moshav Shear Yashuv. The seventy-three soldiers who made their way to operational activity in Lebanon were killed, among them Staff Sergeant Avi Avner, who was laid to rest in the Kiryat Tivon cemetery, aged twenty-one, and left behind his parents and three brothers. You would probably know how to stand in this position… Now it’s your turn to make some cynical statement or a word of protest … There will be With us always, your team, the March 1994 team. “From my father’s letters during the service:” Recently, I begin to think a lot about change, a general change in my life. Maybe go to live alone, and maybe start writing a book or poetry (me?) And maybe just change the attitude to life. I have always been a man of contradictions – dreamer, but not delusional, able to turn situations of tenderness and tenderness into hard and cruel, and vice versa … intellectually capable of understanding difficult things to understand but equally capable of deciphering simple riddles of third graders in time and effort Of children in second grade … It seems to me that God, in his mysterious way, did not want to – I want to have a starting point so easy, although it’s probably me who complicated the situation … When I got into the army I was an innocent child with big dreams, , Unfortunately, no longer a child and no longer innocent. … The loss of innocence is a hard blow, but I hid a little … I know where there is and I can find the innocence, I succeeded (just in case the truth) find it, and now I secretly protect it … “(May 28, 1996). “I’m twenty-one soon, and I’ve known so much violence and blind cruelty, broken dreams, and a life that has suddenly been cut without warning or sign, which makes me feel very old sometimes. … On the one hand, I am still a child with dreams and very little knowledge of the world waiting for me. On the other hand, I know a great deal, perhaps too much, about the twisted and insane side of life, that sometimes I think I will go out to life waiting for me too willing for evil It’s hard for me to get the good … When I get out, I’m going to devour life! To do everything, to live quickly and to know as much as possible, because it is impossible to know when it will stop! “(June 21, 1996).
