Mother: Limor Zarfati
Daughter: Ron Zarfati, aged 22 and 4 months at the time of her death/murder
Family: Limor and Erez have been married for almost 26 years. Ron is the eldest sister to Raz (sister) and Bar (brother) - both 20-year-old twins.
Moments of Terror: At 6:40 AM on October 7th, Ron drove in a friend's car, trying to get home from the party because of the missiles. With her in the car were her boyfriend Idan Haramati and friends Eviatar David and Guy Dalal. Friends from the party and police officers yelled at them to leave the cars and run for cover because there were terrorists. During the run, Ron and Ido separated from Eviatar and Guy. At 8:45 AM, Ron and Ido spoke with us on the phone. Ron sounded scared, we heard gunfire. She said she lost Eviatar and Guy, that there were terrorists but also soldiers (which was later found to be a mistake), and they were waiting for instructions on when they could return to the car and leave. Ido tried to reassure us and said to Erez, "Take the steaks out of the freezer, by evening I'll bring Ron back, and we'll have a barbecue." To conserve battery, we ended the call. Since then, we couldn't get any answer on the phones...
Between Monday and Tuesday night, around 1:00 AM, army personnel knocked on the door - Ron was an officer on duty in the Air Force. Her brothers began to shout and run outside. Erez started to break down, and I just asked him - quiet! I want to hear what they're saying. Officers dealing with casualties tend to speak so softly. This is the moment you realize that we'll never be the happy family we once were. A gap has formed that will ache forever!
The Person Behind the Story: Ron was a child full of light. Her friends called her the sun and a desert fairy. In the last two years, she connected with the desert, and once a month, she went on hikes and spent time in the desert with friends from home and Bedouin friends. Ron was unusually smart. She completed her studies with exceptional academic, social, and athletic excellence. She represented the school in sports competitions, danced all styles since the age of two, and participated in national and international competitions.
In high school, she was accepted into a hip-hop dance group and specialized only in that style. Ron loved people very much. She had friends of all kinds - Druze, Bedouins, a mature ultra-Orthodox woman from Jerusalem. She loved the soldiers who served under her command as a security officer in the Air Force - about 40 soldiers, most from disadvantaged families, whom she called "my kids." Many of their parents came to us during the shiva and spoke a lot about Ron's help, about their children's admiration for her. We heard from her soldiers that she went to trial and received quite a few scoldings from her commanders to protect them.
Ron was a rare combination - she achieved goals like an adult, was very calculated, financially savvy, and thought about the future. On the other hand - a bit spiritual, loved nature, loved the good life, tattoos, and a lot of nature parties and everything related...
Erez said: "She was a Ferrari driving at 200, and they handed her an umbrella."
My Message: Live life, love, and try, because truly, we only live once! Ron's status sentence, which is found everywhere and is eternal: "Whoever doesn't love you, love them early." It symbolizes her love for every person regardless of religion, race, gender, and in her case, age. Many of her friends and the entire family tattooed the sentence on their bodies after her death.
Project in Memory of Ron: We are planning several memorials - a party in her memory in Metzoke Dragot, giving scholarships for disadvantaged people with potential, and we want to support the opening of a dance school named after Ron.
Our Last Embrace: On the Thursday before that Black Saturday, as Erez and I went to sleep, she gave us one last hug and went back to study for the SATs. By morning, she had already left for Ido, and we didn't see her anymore.
