Maryland native dies on duty in Israeli Defense Force amid Israel war

By Rohan Mattu, Denise Koch

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    BALTIMORE, Maryland (WJZ) — An Israeli Defense Force reservist from Maryland died Friday in a missile attack near the Lebanon border.

The Israeli Military said Omer Balva, a 22-year-old reservist in the Artillery Corps, was killed by anti-tank missile fire at the northern border of Israel near Lebanon.

Balva attended Rockville’s Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School from the age of seven until he graduated in 2019.

Both of his parents are Israeli. According to The New York Times, Balva decided to move to Israel after graduation.

Israel mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists last week after Hamas militants fired barrages of rockets and stormed into the Jewish state, killing more than 1,300 people.

Israeli airstrikes continued Monday across the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory where people haven’t had enough food or clean water since bombs started falling on Oct. 7 in response to Hamas’ attack in southern Israel, CBS News reports. The Ministry of Health in Gaza says more than 5,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s air strikes.

Balva’s funeral was held Sunday in Israel.

Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School is planning an event to honor Balva’s life sometime in the near future.

“This is just a really personal matter of a lovely young man who had great energy, had his entire life in front of him and was killed in a terrible conflict that’s been going on for hundreds of years,” said Rabbi Mitchell Malkus, from Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School.

Malkus said Balva was a well-loved student, a soccer star and a theatre student whose energy filled every room he entered.

“He was really grounded in this community but he also felt his Israeli heritage a lot,” Malkus said. “Our school emphasizes strong personal connections and relationships with Israel and its people and I think that really fueled something that already existed in him from when he was a young child.”

Balva was reportedly on vacation here in the United States when he was called up to fight.

“He wanted to rush back and be there to defend the country,” Malkus said.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington released a statement on his death saying, in part, “We know that you join us in our mourning and in our fervent hopes for an end to this senseless violence and hatred.”

For the Rockville community, for fellow students at his alma mater, these are dark hours when a conflict halfway around the world becomes even more personal.”

“It’s not just close to home, it’s inside our house,” Malkus said. “What happened, it’s just devastating to all of us.”

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