Elkrief, Eliyahu

Eliyahu, son of Esther and Mordechai Elkrief, was born on February 3, 1972 at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, eight months after the family’s immigration to Israel. At the end of July 1990, Eli enlisted in the IDF, and he chose to begin his service in the officers’ course of the Ordnance Corps, which was the first graduating class of the “Direct Officer Course.” Eli liked to serve in the army and was very proud of his position and contribution. During his military service Eli met Libi and later married her. They spent their early lives together in the Krayot, but established their permanent home in Moshav Granot Hagalil on the northern road. In November before his death, Eli was involved in a car accident. After the accident he felt that he was ripe for business and that it was time to retire, to realize his dream of establishing an independent office. Indeed, he founded SoftWeb Technologies, which initially dealt mainly with advertising, selling, designing and producing print products, designing exhibitions and setting up websites. When the Second Lebanon War broke out, Eli’s family moved to Rechovot in order to keep the children away from the noise of Katyushas and shells. But because of the high work ethic and the workers who waited in the north in his new small company, Eli continued to go north every day. After a while, he decided to return to the house in Granot Hagalil and continue to live there despite the situation. In those days, along with his many trips, he was drafted into the war several times and released. The last time he was drafted was on August 2, 2006; he did not return. On the 12th of Av 5766 (6.8.2006), near the entrance to Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, soldiers of the “Hiram” Battalion were waiting for an order to enter Lebanon, while a “Katyusha” rocket fired from Lebanon and killed him. Eli was thirty-four years old. He was laid to rest in the military section of the Kiryat Ata cemetery, leaving a wife, a son and a daughter, two sisters and two brothers, and was promoted to the rank of major.