Tamar Ariel

Tamar Ariel was born in 1989 in Masu'ot Yitzhak

Tamar Ariel was born in 1989 in Masu'ot Yitzhak, a religious cooperative moshav. She was the third of 6 children of Anat and Hanan Ariel. Her father grew up on the moshav, and her mother came to Israel from Puerto Rico.

She attended the regional Shafir school and then a religious girls' high school in Even Shmuel. She was a counselor in the Bnei Akiva youth movement. After school she did 2 years of national service, then decided to enlist in the IDF.

In 2009 she was accepted to the Air Force flight course. During her first solo flight she had to eject from her training plane and hurt her back, then returned after recovery and moved to the combat navigator track. She completed the course in December 2012 while also studying politics and government.

She served as a navigator in the Valley Squadron, flying the F-16D. She took part in operational sorties, many of them during Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

In October 2014 she died with 3 friends in a snowstorm on the Annapurna trek in Nepal. She was promoted to captain after her death. A high school in Netanya, a pre-military academy and a synagogue are named after her, and a 2018 documentary tells her story.