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Israeli-American reservist killed by Hezbollah rocket just days after being called back to Israel
(JTA) — Omer Balva was on vacation in Maryland, where he was born and lived until graduating from high school, when Hamas attacked Israel Oct. 7.
The child of Israeli parents who lived in the United States for decades, Balva, 22, recently finished a stint in the Israel Defense Forces and was among the 360,000 reservists called up as Israel mobilized to respond. Like an untold number of Israelis in the United States, he quickly booked a flight, packed safety gear and headed home.
There, Balva was killed Friday by a rocket fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon, just days after he was deployed to Israel’s northern border.
Balva’s death was a blow not only to his family and country but to his friends and teachers from Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland, which he attended starting in second grade. After graduating in 2019, he moved to Israel to join the IDF.
The pluralistic Jewish school mourned Balva, whom it said had been “a beloved student,” on its Facebook page. “Omer was an unabashed advocate for the State of Israel. He is a hero to the State of Israel, the Jewish people, and the school,” the school wrote. “We are devastated and heartbroken.”
Dozens of condolences from people who knew him followed, including one woman who said he had performed in a school production of “Mamma Mia!” alongside her son.
Balva detailed his family’s ties to Israel in a class presentation posted online when he was a high school junior. His father’s family had been in the land since being expelled from Spain during the Inquisition, he wrote, and his grandmother survived a 1938 Arab massacre of Jews in her native Tiberias when she was hidden between two mattresses. While his parents moved to the United States in 1996, he said the family spoke only Hebrew at home.
“One day I plan on moving back to Israel and raising my children in the Jewish land,” he wrote in the presentation. He added, “My passion has always been to protect Israel and suggest what is best for what I believe is the greatest country in the world.”
Balva had recently enrolled at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, where he was studying business and economics, according to his LinkedIn profile. He had returned to Maryland to visit friends during the Sukkot holiday.
“He was such a loving person,” one of those friends, Ethan Missner, told the Washington Post. “He brought a lot of light to the world.”
Balva and Missner had spent the night before Balva’s return flight to Israel packing supplies for his IDF unit, as part of a massive effort to supply Israeli troops with necessary supplies. Unusually for them, they also put on tefillin, the leather straps and boxes that Jews wear on the head and on the arm, typically during weekday morning prayers, Missner’s father told the Forward.
Balva is one of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and security forces killed on and after Oct. 7. Most died in the initial attack, but half a dozen have been killed near the Lebanon border as Israel contends with rockets and incursions there. On Sunday, an Israeli soldier was killed while trying to retrieve bodies near a southern kibbutz that was hard hit on Oct. 7, the IDF said.
Balva is survived by his parents, Sigal and Eyal, and his three siblings, Barak, Shahar and Itai. He was buried Sunday in the military cemetery in Herzliya.
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The post Israeli-American reservist killed by Hezbollah rocket just days after being called back to Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Widespread Protests Held in Australia to Support Palestinians
Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in the ‘Nationwide March for Palestine’ protest in Sydney, Australia, August 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
Thousands of Australians joined pro-Palestinian rallies on Sunday, organizers said, amid strained relations between Israel and Australia following the center-left government’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state.
More than 40 protests took place across Australia on Sunday, Palestine Action Group said, including large turnouts in state capitals Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. The group said around 350,000 attended the rallies nationwide, including around 50,000 in Brisbane, though police estimated the numbers there at closer to 10,000. Police did not have estimates for crowd sizes in Sydney and Melbourne.
In Sydney, organizer Josh Lees said Australians were out in force to “demand an end to this genocide in Gaza and to demand that our government sanction Israel” as rallygoers, many with Palestinian flags, chanted “free, free Palestine.”
Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the umbrella group for Australia’s Jews, told Sky New television that the rallies created “an unsafe environment and shouldn’t be happening.”
The protests follow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week stepping up his personal attacks on his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese over his government’s decision this month to recognize a Palestinian state.
Diplomatic ties between Australia and Israel soured after Albanese’s Labor government said it would conditionally recognize Palestinian statehood, following similar moves by France, Britain and Canada.
The August 11 announcement came days after tens of thousands of people marched across Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge, calling for peace and aid deliveries to Gaza, where Israel began an offensive nearly two years ago after the Hamas militant group launched a deadly cross-border attack.
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US Envoy Meets Netanyahu on Lebanon and Syria, Israeli Officials Say
US Ambassador to Turkey and US special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack speaks after meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, in Beirut, Lebanon July 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Top US envoy Thomas Barrack arrived in Israel on Sunday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss Syria and Lebanon, three Israeli officials said.
The meeting was first reported by Axios, citing three Israeli and US sources, and followed discussions between Barrack and Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and Defense Minister Israel Katz.
Dermer held talks with Syria’s foreign minister Asaad al-Shibani in Paris on Tuesday on security arrangements in southern Syria, two Syrian sources familiar with the meeting said.
Syrian and Israeli officials have been conducting US-mediated talks on de-escalating conflict in southern Syria. A previous round of talks was held in Paris in late July but ended without a final accord.
On Monday, Barrack said in Lebanon that Israel should comply with a plan under which Lebanese militant group Hezbollah would be disarmed by the end of the year in exchange for a halt to Israel’s military operations in Lebanon.
The plan sets out a phased roadmap for terrorist groups to hand in their arsenals as Israel’s military halts ground, air and sea operations and withdraws troops from Lebanon’s south.
Lebanon’s cabinet approved the plan’s objectives earlier this month despite Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm, and Barrack said it was now Israel’s turn to cooperate.
There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office.
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Israel Strikes Yemeni Capital Sanaa
Smoke billows from the site of Israeli air strikes in Sanaa, Yemen, August 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Israeli strikes hit the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Sunday in retaliation for Houthi missiles fired towards Israel, with Houthi media saying the attack killed at least two people and injured five.
The strikes are the latest in over a year of direct attacks and counterstrikes between Israel and Houthi militants in Yemen, part of a spillover from the war in Gaza.
The Israeli military said the targets included a military compound housing the presidential palace, two power plants and a fuel storage site. The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said the strikes killed at least two people and injured five.
“The strikes were conducted in response to repeated attacks by the Houthi terrorist regime against the State of Israel and its civilians, including the launching of surface-to-surface missiles and UAVs toward Israeli territory in recent days,” the military said in statement.
On Friday, the Houthis said they had fired a ballistic missile towards Israel in their latest attack, which they said was in support of Palestinians in Gaza. An Israeli Air Force official said on Sunday the missile most likely carried several sub-munitions “intended to be detonated upon impact.”
“This is the first time that this kind of missile has been launched from Yemen,” the official said.
Since Israel’s war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group Hamas began in October 2023, the Iran-aligned Houthis have attacked vessels in the Red Sea in what they describe as acts of solidarity with the Palestinians.
They have also frequently fired missiles towards Israel, most of which have been intercepted. Israel has responded with strikes on Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, including the vital Hodeidah port.
Abdul Qader al-Murtada, a senior Houthi official, said on Sunday the Houthis, who control much of Yemen’s population, would continue to act in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
“(Israel) must know that we will not abandon our brothers in Gaza, whatever the sacrifices,” he said on X.