Kaplan, Zvi (Zvika)

Zvi (Zvika), son of Tzila and Yehuda Kaplan, was born on April 6, 1986 in Haifa. He lived in Kibbutz Merav. He studied and was educated in the Rambam religious elementary school in his neighborhood, and from an early age he was gifted with a good sense of humor and mischievousness, but above all he was very sensitive to others. Zvika was an active member of the Bnei Akiva youth movement. Prior to joining the pre-army preparatory program in Eli, in the Binyamin region, he began volunteering for Kav LaChaim, where he met his future wife, Adi, who served in the organization.
Zvika enlisted in the IDF on July 23, 2006, at the height of the Second Lebanon War, and began his service as a rookie in the 13th Battalion.
When Operation Tzuk Eitan began, the Golani Brigade received the task of destroying the terrorist infrastructure and tunnels in the Saja’iya camp in Gaza. On July 20, 2014, the command unit was hit by a barrage of missiles, and Zvika Kaplan was killed in the battle, at the age of 28. Zvika was buried in the military cemetery in Haifa and left behind a wife and two children, parents and two sisters. To commemorate him, his friends donated a “wet path” in the park near Beit She’an, where Zvika liked to run every week.