The family of Sgt. Nove Chabosh learned details of his final hours after he was killed in a tank incident in southern Lebanon. Late Thursday night, about an hour and a half before he died, he texted his father, Haim, saying he was supposed to come home on Sunday, but asked that his mother not be told so she would not be upset if something happened. On Friday morning, when officers came to tell the family their son had fallen, Haim read the message aloud to his wife, Einav.
Speaking to ynet on Tuesday, Einav said, "I had the privilege of being his mother." She described her 20-year-old son as loving people and the country, with "good eyes" and a magnetic personality that drew many different people to him. "He was my light, my happiness and my righteous one," she said, adding that her lesson from him is to wake up each morning with a sense of mission, including raising his younger sisters, Noam and Nesya.
After his death, the parents found a notebook of letters he had left behind about what it means to be a soldier. Einav said she could not sleep, searched his room and found the notebook after asking for signs from him. "I asked forgiveness for snooping, but then I found that notebook," she said. "It gave me a lot of strength. Words give strength, especially when they are in his handwriting." She added that the writings helped her feel connected to him.
Chabosh wanted to enlist in Golani before the army assigned him to the Armored Corps, and he debated the decision until speaking with his rabbi. His mother said that in their home, service meant living with purpose, and that he told her the night before enlistment, "I am in the Armored Corps." She said he became "the most enthusiastic soldier in the Armored Corps," and that two weeks ago his battalion commander asked him to go to officers' course, but he replied that he still had more to contribute in combat and would go later. In her eulogy on Sunday, Einav said he had known she was pregnant, and that their last conversation was two days before he was killed, when she told him he would always remain the family's undisputed prince and that he had a sister on the way. She also said their youngest daughter, Nesya, was distraught, wants the family to hug her too, and feels it is unfair that everyone is hugging the parents but not her. The family says it is trying to hold on to the good in his memory, and Einav said she will tell her daughters that even in darkness, there is good if they look at life through Nove's eyes.
