The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday morning identified the soldier killed in Southern Lebanon on Wednesday alongside a civilian researcher as Sgt. Gur Kehati, 20, of the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion, from Nir Banim.
He was killed alongside Maj. (res.) Ze’ev Erlich, 71, a renowned scholar and archaeological expert. According to Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster, Erlich had entered Lebanon as a civilian alongside IDF soldiers.
The Hezbollah attack was said to have taken place at a historic fortress roughly four miles from the Jewish state’s northern border. According to Channel 12‘s Amit Segal, who grew up with Erlich in Ofra, he was shot at the Shrine of the Prophet Shimon in the village of Shama.
Though Erlich was not active in reserve service, the IDF’s Personnel Directorate has reportedly decided to recognize him as a fallen soldier.
A military official told JNS on Wednesday night that the circumstances surrounding his entry into Lebanon were being probed by the army.
“We are shocked by [Erlich’s] departure,” said Binyamin Regional Council head Israel Ganz, describing him as “a man whose name was a symbol for knowledge and love of the land” and one of the founders of Ofra.
The Yesha Council, which represents the interests of the some 500,000 Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, eulogized the slain researcher as “one of the pillars of the settlement [movement] and the forefathers of the study of geography, archeology and Jewish history in Judea and Samaria.”
The death toll among Israeli troops on all fronts since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre currently stands at 803, according to official military figures.
Additionally, Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, a member of the Israel Border Police’s Yamam National Counter-Terrorism Unit, was fatally wounded during a hostage-rescue mission in Gaza in June, and civilian defense contractor Liron Yitzhak was mortally wounded there in May.