Ben Ayala and Yehuda. He was born on 20 th September 1976 in Tel Aviv. Brother to Guy and Shiri. His mother, Ayala nee Pinchas, is the daughter of parents from Yemen who immigrated to Israel in the 1920s, and his father, Yehuda, was born to parents from Poland who immigrated to Israel in the late 1920s. So that their children were a kind of mixture, the fruit of the Israeli exiles’ kibbutz. Assaf was the youngest son of his parents, his brother Guy and Shiri were ten and twelve years his senior. He spent his childhood and youth in the Dan neighborhood in Tel Aviv, where he graduated from the Yesgav Elementary School and continued at the Ironi High School 14. From an early age Assaf was attracted to machines and electronics, and after two years in a theoretical school he chose to continue his studies at home – The professional high school “Customs Pay”, in the direction of machinery, cars and motorcycles especially fascinated him, and when the law allowed for a driver’s license at the age of sixteen, Assaf immediately made a motorcycle license, and his mother, Ayala, bought him a motorcycle. , Assaf issued a license to drive a car and received a car from his parents, in which he continued his hobby – driving the area Assaf was surrounded by friends, the same knowledge He loved his friends and all the residents of the street he lived in. His friends say that he knew how to make the most of life, took pleasure from every moment, and took every opportunity to experience another experience – discos, pubs, trips to Eilat. Asaf was traveling with his family in Europe and the United States, and Levan was traveling with his friends, and Asaf was eager to know that he would serve as a combat soldier in an elite unit. Two months before the induction, he began training and ran on the beach carrying a bag of sand on his back, in order to increase his physical fitness. In March 1995, Assaf enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in the Nahal Brigade, where he volunteered for the IDF’s Paratroopers Brigade. As a combat soldier, he participated in various operations in Lebanon, and was assigned to an officers’ course, but refused to leave the team, with whom he began the military track and his friends, whom he felt so close to. “I met Assaf for the first time in Lebanon at the pumpkin outpost,” said Dr. Yariv Yobab, a doctor who served with Assaf, in the framework of my military service as a doctor, to join their unit, Their first operation requires a doctor’s escort. I did not know any of them, but as soon as I entered the cramped little room, which was no bigger than a family bathroom that accommodated some 15 fighters using the warm bed method, the first thing that captivated me was the smile, Assaf’s smile, The only week I knew him. All that week, which included both preparations for the operation and the operation itself, I was close to Assaf. We are destined to be the backbone, which constitutes the deterrent force. In all my preparations and exercises, which were entirely new to me, I was close to Assaf, who was a guide, an explanation, reaching out and even a bit scolding when necessary. During the operation we lay together, foot to foot, for a whole night, when the heavy rain that fell on us did not stop for a second. … On the way back to the outpost, when we are heavy with the rain, the mud and the weight we carried on us, tired and shivering with cold, he again gathered an assistant, reached out and pushed, and again with the eternal smile. “As if in a kind of race to do as much as possible. When he returned to the army on Sunday, he compared with his friends who did what, where and with whom. On the evening of 28 February 1997, the helicopter disaster occurred when two Yasur helicopters collided over Moshav Shear Yashuv. The seventy-three fighters, who made their way to operational activity in Lebanon, were killed, including Assaf, when he returned from his vacation to the pumpkin outpost in the eastern sector. He was twenty years and five months dead. Assaf was buried in the Kiryat Shaul Military Cemetery, leaving behind his parents, brother, sister and friends, who remember his image every second of their lives and miss him forever.
