Omri “Omrikey” Ahrak, 26, from Elyakhin, was assassinated by Hamas terrorists while trying to flee the Supernova music festival on October 7, 2023.
Omri had come to the party with four friends – two former army comrades and their girlfriends. When rocket fire began, the group decided to leave the site to return home. Along the way, they were ambushed by a cell of Hamas terrorists and Omri was murdered along with Danielle Waldman, Noam Shai and Shahar Gindi. Almog Sarusi was kidnapped and murdered in Gaza almost a year later, his remains found by IDF troops.
Omri’s family searched for him for five days, including at the festival site, hoping to find a sign of life or his body, but to no avail. Authorities eventually informed them of the discovery of his body.
Omri was buried on October 12, 2023 in Elyakhin. He leaves behind his parents, Raya and Zephaniah, as well as his siblings, Gal and Meital.
Born and raised in the small moshav Elyakhin, near Hadera, Omri attended schools in the neighboring kibbutzim Givat Haim and Kfar Monash. Active and athletic, he worked out regularly, played footvolleyball and was an avid supporter of the Maccabi Haifa soccer team, according to the state eulogy.
Passionate about music, Omri played the guitar and sang with his friends. In recent years, he composed and wrote his own songs, dreaming of turning this passion into a career. In his honor, his loved ones created “Omrikey jam sessions”, musical meetings bringing together his friends around his memory.
After high school, Omri served in the Orev Battalion of the Givati Brigade in the IDF. Discharged from the military, he traveled to South America before returning to Israel, where he worked as a security guard and trained in coding with the Infinity Labs program.
He had only been working at a Tel Aviv company for two weeks when he was killed. Omri also considered becoming a personal trainer.
His father, Zephaniah, told a local media outlet that “Omri was a child who had an insatiable appetite for life. He served in an important role at Givati, then he took his ‘big trip’ abroad like everyone else, and came back to study computer science and build a life. Just two weeks before his assassination, he had found a job at a company in Tel Aviv, which welcomed him with open arms. He was a child you couldn’t help but love, always smiling, always polite, always attentive to others – even when he was going through emotional storms, he always found time to look at you and ask you how you were doing. go.”
His father added: “Omri was 26 years and 24 days old – that’s all God allowed us to experience with this incredible boy. He was extremely competitive and loved people. The number of friends he managed to make was simply incredible. He was always at the center of everything: his smile, his personality, and the little stupid things he did, which made everyone laugh, naturally attracted people to him.”
He added that Omri “deeply loved music, played wonderfully and had an exceptional voice. When he sang Hava Nagila, he made people cry. His voice, full of pain and emotion, reflected a unique soul.”
His mother, Raya, told Israel Hayom that Omri “was the glue of his group of friends, a boy overflowing with love, who gave hugs and received hugs in return, and who was always at the center of everything. He loved the sea, loved playing sports with his friends, especially footvolley – especially because this sport allowed people of all ages to be included.”
In his memory, she added, the family is raising funds to build a footvolley court in their hometown, “to make his dream come true.”
To read other tributes about the victims of the Hamas massacres of 10/7/2023 and the war that followed, click here.
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