Ben Ali and Moshe. He was born on May 4, 1980, in Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot. The fifth son in a warm and loving family, brother to Osnat, Oren, Revital and Jonathan. At the age of five his younger brother Dekel was born. The six brothers functioned as a cohesive, united and loving unit. Maor grew up in Moshav Gefen in the Adulam region and was educated at the “Gefen Tirosh” elementary school in the Mateh Yehuda Regional Council. In high school he studied at the military academy of the Ort Tzrifin armament corps, where he acquired the profession of a car mechanic. Maor had good hands and he loved painting very much. In his youth, Maor was a member of the Bnei Akiva youth movement and participated in the activities of young instructors in the Mateh Yehuda Regional Council. His main hobby was traveling in Israel: he packed a backpack and a stick and disappeared among the paths he loved so much. His favorite sport was abseiling-surfing from cliffs with ropes. His dream was to be an abseiling instructor at Tzuki Dargot, near the Dead Sea. Maor – as his name is – was a boy full of light who filled the house with light and sounds. From an early age, he demonstrated exceptional leadership skills, was the most prominent of the group and the most special. “Wherever there was, there was always a ‘halo’ around him, and one could not miss his presence,” said one of the friends. Maor was a man of peace and kindness. He never bore a grudge, loved the other, and enlightened everyone. Sensitive to the plight of hard-working people and all that he had asked to share with others. As a child, his sister says, he gave sweets, good things and money to other children, and during his studies at the military boarding school he always cared for low-income members of personal equipment and pocket money. Maor was the mainstay of his family. His apparent inclination to cleanliness and order was evident in his youth. He helped a lot with the housework, cleaned thoroughly and left behind a bright, shiny house. Every Friday, after he finished helping his home, he volunteered to help with the housework and the garden in other houses in the moshav, thus winning several other “mothers”. Around the Shabbat table, when all the family would gather, the eyes would be turned to Maor because he would make everyone laugh to tears. Maor had the wisdom of life and many found him attentive. His older sister, Osnat, testified: “Maor was for me the ‘mirror’ brother – I always cared what he thought about every subject.” Maor enlisted in the IDF in early February 1999. After a difficult struggle, he arrived at the “Raven” reconnaissance unit of the Golani Brigade, not before he passed an ATV instructor course and served a period In the school for infantry and infantry. “Maor was a dominant figure in the team, a figure of a leader, one that everyone tried to connect with,” says Maor, a member of the team and a member of the team. “Maor always stood out in the team in a way that inspires admiration : Whether it is his firm muscular body structure or his orientation with regard to the soldier in general and the weapons in particular, whenever it was necessary to choose a soldier who would demonstrate a certain exercise as a showcase for subsequent operations, it was natural for them to choose a light that would demonstrate to everyone. One who will succeed in passing through every obstacle and task that will be imposed upon him. ” First Sergeant Meir-Maor Gabbay fell during his service on September 30, 2001. He was twenty-one years old when he fell. He was laid to rest in the military section of the Gefen-Tirosh cemetery. Survived by parents, two sisters and three brothers. In the condolence letter to the bereaved family, Lt. Col. Amir Abulafia, the unit’s commander, wrote: “Maor’s prominent and charismatic character was an example of my whole lifeThe battalion has a great deal of dedication and dedication. The spirit of volunteerism that permeated him did not subside a bit during his military service, from his volunteering to the ‘Raven’ Unit in Golani, to the manner in which he performed every task that was required. “Maor was a friend and an evil person, who did not spare me from giving and helping anyone who needed it, and I can testify that he had deep moral and human roots and that he acted according to the education and values he derived from his home.” As a soldier and as a citizen of the State of Israel. “At the memorial ceremony marking the third anniversary of his downfall, Maor’s sister spoke:” This is the third time that we are standing here, and on your death we are crying. / Still do not believe and do not understand, / And in the cemetery – candle after candle we light. / The feeling of losing a precious person / is a sense of cruel pain / leaving behind many orphans / without a drop of mercy. / … / I want you to know that if I had a wish / I would devote myself to seeing you. “They said to Maor:” It’s been three years and you still have not come back to us. It seems that you went for a walk or an army, you went but refuses to return. Every morning we wake up to a gloomy reality, a reality the mind knows what the heart refuses to understand, and it seems that no matter how long it has passed, no matter how much it passes, the fact that Maor will not enter the heart and always be seen on the phone or the knock on the door. Only on selected days are we forced to accept what we are trying to repress. It’s hard to talk about you in the past tense, and it’s impossible to think of you as dead and gone. You lit a flame that refuses to extinguish. … “We will be able to fill countless pages about who you were, but we will reserve the right to leave things for us, things that will always remind us of you and never forget our friend … in our heart we will always be invincible and live forever.”
