Son of Edna and Chaim. A brother to Einav and Adva. He was born in the “Barzilai” Hospital in Ashkelon on April 4, 1981. As a child, he was a very independent child and took responsibility for himself, and as a young boy he was already active and involved in community life, and devoted most of his free time to the Dotan tribe, where he began as a trainee. He worked as a shift manager in a chain of restaurants and served as a chain manager in an additional chain of restaurants, with all his actions showing a thoroughness and seriousness, the respectful attitude he gave to every person, and his sincere desire to help and give. On enlistment, on March 21, 2000, he was assigned to the Combat Engineering Corps School of Military Engineering. At the end of basic training and advanced training, he embarked on a rapid course of command, completed a course for commanders, and continued to officers’ training, and in November 2001 he returned as an officer to the Halutz and served as a platoon commander in Battalion Lahav Battalion 603. He lost his childhood friend, Sergeant-Tomer Nov, who served in the Border Police, in an attack on soldiers in Hebron in November 2002. In June 2003, Aviv moved to the Gaza Division and became the first “Tunnel Officer” in the IDF. Aviv was the founder of the unit to locate and detonate smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, and who headed it. In this framework, he developed the combat doctrine against the tunnel threat, designed the role of “Tunnel Officer” and commanded a team of fighters. The tunnel crew carried out many sorties into the Philadelphi route – the border area separating Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, and the separation wall between the city of Rafah in the Palestinian territory and the city of Rafah located in Egypt. His subordinates loved his role with all their heart and loved his charisma, ability to withstand stress, courage, restraint, self-control and coolness. “A real leader,” it was said. As commander of the team, Aviv was the first to enter the tunnels and scan them, and he would stay there for a long time to investigate the nature of their digging and learn about the Palestinians’ methods of operation. As a person who developed a new field in the IDF, Aviv discovered an intellectual ability and exceptional professional knowledge, creativity and initiative, and he launched original and daring thinking. , Combined with the experience he accumulated in the field, made Aviv an expert in his field in general, the IDF. Thus, for example, Aviv minted the term “spring dimension,” which means the amount of explosives needed to detonate a particular structure. “I came to a situation with Aviv, who while he and the crew are working on a tunnel, which can take a day and a half, I can go to sleep quietly because I know there is someone to rely on,” said Lieutenant Colonel Yariv Gamlieli, chief engineering officer of the Gaza Division. A month before his fall, he captured the terrorists and illegal aliens in one of the tunnels, and instead of hurting them, he decided to remove them from the tunnel. “We have other values,” he explained in response to a question about why he did so. Aviv spent many hours with the defense minister and the chief of staff, but chose to play down this fact.When asked how he would like to end his life, his answer was “a big explosion,” that is, without suffering. Aviv fell during the Battle of the Philadelphi Route in Rafah on 21 Iyar, May 12, 2004 when the APC, which he commanded, was hit by an anti-tank missile. (For full memorial, see Hebrew biography)
