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IDF reservist Yonah Efraim Feldbaum killed in the Gaza Strip

Master Sgt. Feldbaum’s death marks the third IDF fatality since the ceasefire began earlier this month.

By World Israel News Staff

Master Sergeant Yonah Efraim Feldbaum was named Wednesday morning as the IDF reservist killed in a Hamas attack in the Gaza Strip the previous day.

Known affectionately as Efi to his loved ones, Feldbaum was a 37-year-old father of five from Zayit Ranan, a town in Judea and Samaria.

A dual Israel-American citizen, he served as a heavy machinery operator in the IDF Gaza Division’s Combat Engineering Corps.

“Efi was very well known and loved throughout the area. He devoted much of his time to developing young settlements. Efi was deeply connected to the land of Israel and fell while acting to defend it,” read a statement from the Binyamin Regional Council eulogizing Feldbaum.

He was killed when a Hamas operative launched an RPG at a group of soldiers operating in the Jenina neighborhood of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

Notably, Jenina lies within the “Yellow Line” marking the ceasefire boundary, where IDF troops are permitted to be stationed.

Feldbaum is the third soldier killed by Hamas since the implementation of the ceasefire earlier in October. Two weeks ago, two IDF soldiers — Major Yaniv Kola, 26, and Itai Ya’abetz, 21, both from Modi’in-Maccabim-Re’ut — were killed in a sophisticated Hamas ambush. Operatives fired an anti-tank missile at an armored vehicle, sparking a fire. As troops arrived to rescue their comrades, a sniper shot three soldiers, killing one.

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Hamas has denied responsibility for both Tuesday’s attack and the earlier ambush, claiming it remains committed to the ceasefire and that the incidents were carried out by independent terror factions.

Despite these claims, Hamas has continued to violate the ceasefire in numerous ways. For more than a week, it has refused to return the bodies of deceased hostages.

On Monday, Hamas staged the “discovery” of a hostage’s body — which turned out to be the remains of a captive returned to Israel in 2023 — and called the Red Cross to retrieve it. The Red Cross delivered the remains to Israel, where they were identified as those of a previously repatriated hostage, not among the 13 deceased still held in Gaza.

Hamas later claimed to have located the bodies of hostages Amiram Cooper and Sahar Baruch but said it was refusing to return them to Israel in response to an airstrike carried out after Feldbaum was killed.