Sgt. Omer Sarah Benjo, 20, was a month away from completing her regular service in the IDF when she was killed in a rocket attack targeting the IDF Northern Command in Safed. Benjo, from Moshav Ge'a near Ashkelon, served as an infantry lookout in Battalion 869 of the Golani Brigade. She was a neighbor of Sgt. Yael Leibushor, 20, who also served as an infantry lookout, in Battalion 414 of the Border Defense Corps. Leibushor fell on October 7 during the terrorist attack on the Nahal Oz outpost.
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The residents of Ge'a gathered to mourn and gazed at a composite kindergarten photo from 2009, which shows Benjo and Leibushor in side-by-side photos. The two parted ways after high school, as Leibushor completed her studies at Kfar Silver High School, while Benjo studied at the Yad Mordechai High School on the moshav.
"Omer finished studying with us in the summer of 2021, and she was a brilliant, quiet, modest, kind, inquisitive and curious student," said Deganit Karni-Bahar, who was Benjo's homeroom teacher in high school. "She didn't give up on her dreams and made sure to pursue them and fulfill them. She had big plans," she added.
Omer's mother Hadas said she is unable to believe what happened. "I can't believe that the knock on the door reached me too," she described.
Gili Leibushor, Yael's mother, wrote on Facebook: "I'm shocked. Yaeli, I don't know how it works for those who are no longer here, so I'm telling you with great sadness and pain that Omer was buried next to you. The whole community is in shock. A shock that it lost a daughter again. How we hoped you would stay there alone, that they would open a military cemetery because you were killed and that would be the end of it."
"And now Omer, who helped soldiers get to a safe area, was killed. Omer, who was supposed to be discharged in a month, won't come back to her parents anymore. And again the community stands silent with flags at half-mast, and everyone comes quietly at night to accompany Omer. And again a car passes on the main street of the community with a coffin and a girl inside. It's unbearable. Two 20-year-old girls who lived on the same street are now living in a different world on the 'street' of a new cemetery – the street of sorrow, pain and longing. Shock and silence – I stand speechless facing the situation, truly this time I have no words."