Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israeli Officer Dies of Wounds Suffered in 2014 Gaza War

JERUSALEM (JTA) — An Israel Defense Forces officer who was critically wounded during the 2014 Gaza War died of his wounds.

Maj. Hagai Ben-Ari of Moshav Nov, a village on the Golan Heights, died Tuesday, more than two years after what Israel dubbed Operation Protective Edge.

Ben-Ari, 31, a captain in the Paratroopers Brigade, suffered a severe brain injury from a Gaza sniper on July 21, 2014, days after the start of the operation. He never regained consciousness.

Shortly before the start of the Gaza war, Ben-Ari had been named the new commander of the elite Paratroopers’ sayeret, or reconnaissance, unit. He had not taken up the position at the time of his injury.

He is survived by his wife and three young children.

A year after his injury he was moved back to his home on the moshav with medical equipment, where many of his friends and former army comrades continued to visit him, Ynet reported.

He is the 68th soldier killed in the Gaza war.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.