At the Chief of Staff’s excellence ceremony, the brother of Ariel ben Moshe, who was killed during the October 7th massacre, delivered an emotional speech describing his brother’s relentless drive for excellence and his dedication to protecting others.
He opened with a childhood memory: “When I was eight, my older brother Ariel came home sweaty, dirty and, most of all, frustrated from basketball practice. The practice had not gone well, to say the least. He had been late because at that time we did not own a car, so he had to walk to the edge of town. Everyone else arrived groomed in sportswear and basketball shoes. He came in his school shirt and regular shoes. Everyone had a ball, and he arrived without one."
“He poured everything out to my mother, saying it wasn’t fair, that he would never become the best version of himself because he didn’t have the same conditions as everyone else. He feared that his starting point would dictate his entire life story, that he would never break boundaries or create a better version of himself. The fear turned into hunger to prove himself to himself and to everyone else, hunger to fight the conditions, the circumstances and the ‘luck’ he had."
Ariel later earned admission to the military boarding school in Haifa, graduated with honors and enlisted in the Paratroopers Brigade’s 202nd Battalion, where he consistently received excellence awards throughout his service.
During the final week of a company commander course, the brother discovered he had been assigned to retake a difficult navigation and combat fitness exam despite already receiving a high score.“I approached my company commander and told him there must be a mistake because I had finished the test with quite a good score - 92," he recounted. “He told me the commander responsible was in the office to the left."
“That was my brother’s office," he said. When he asked Ariel why he had been placed on the retest list, his brother answered with a single question: “Where did your eight points go?"
The following morning, Ariel joined the cadets for the retest himself. “He registered his entire company because, in his words, ‘if it’s possible to improve, then you improve.' Of course he ran the entire test with me and pushed without stopping." He eventually improved his score from 92 to 94.
“There were no compromises and no concessions - not on an operational mission, not in detention and not on a test. Everything is done properly, and if it can be improved, then you improve. That was the uncompromising standard he believed in."
After continuing his military career in the Paratroopers Brigade reconnaissance unit and later being accepted into Sayeret Matkal, Ariel rushed south from Ein Zivan when the October 7th massacre began.
“He rushed to the surrounding communities, gathered a small force from his unit, and set out toward Kibbutz Re’im." Before entering the kibbutz, Ariel instructed the soldiers with him that “civilian lives come before soldiers’ lives."
"And so it was, house by house, encounter after encounter, with him leading the force from the front. He was the first to enter a house with a hostage inside and the first to be hit. My older brother fell on Saturday night. He was the embodiment of a person at the front, striving for contact and serving as a buffer between civilians and terrorists without a shred of doubt. An excellence award is a person of the front, present where it is complex and at the forefront, someone who dictates his place in the situation."