Parents of fallen commander Arnon Zmora plant tree in his honor on Tu Bishvat

At the Harel High School in Mevaseret Zion, on the occasion of Tu BiShvat, they held a tree planting ceremony in memory of the school's fallen graduates, accompanied by a discourse in the classrooms.

The ceremony was attended by Ruthie Zmora, the mother of fallen Commander Arnon Zmora, who led the rescue operation that freed hostages Noa Argmani, Shlomi Ziv, Andrei Kozlov and Almog Jan.

The principal of the high school, Liat Segev, said: "Every class heard about the fallen from their families, and after a moving ceremony in which Ruthie Zmora, the mother of Commander Arnon Zmora, who fell in the Arnon operation to rescue the hostages, spoke. The 11th-grade students and the families then went out together to plant trees."

On the morning of the October 7 massacre, Zmora was among the first to be sent to the battlefields with a team of the Special Operations Unit and the Shin Bet. As a commander, Zmora strived to make contact with his team in a battle of more than three hours, and then, according to orders and necessity, they continued to Sderot, the Nahal Oz post and Kibbutz Be'eri.

On June 8, 2024, Zmora commanded a team of fighters who raided a building in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in order to rescue three of the four Israeli hostages held there by Hamas. He was seriously injured, evacuated to Tel Hashomer Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

Zmora was the only fighter killed in the operation, which ended with the successful rescue of the four hostages. After his death, he was promoted to the rank of commander, and was buried in the police section of the military cemetery on Mount Herzl.