Bnei Yehuda turned their first home fixture of the 2026/27 season into a tribute, hosting the family and Maglan unit comrades of Sergeant Adam Tzarfati, a devoted club fan killed in southern Lebanon in June, for a memorial ceremony before kickoff.
Club owner Eliran Oved and CEO Oshri Dudai presented the family with a specially commissioned portrait of Adam wearing a Bnei Yehuda jersey from 2006 — the year he was born — as supporters in the Hatikva Quarter stadium looked on.
Tzarfati, from Rosh Ha'ayin, was 20 years old and served as a fighter in the elite Maglan reconnaissance unit. He was killed on June 1 when an explosive drone struck his position during operational activity in southern Lebanon; three other soldiers were wounded in the same incident, one of them seriously.
His death came amid a grinding string of losses along the northern front since the ceasefire with Hezbollah took hold in April, with Tzarfati among more than a dozen soldiers killed by drone and UAV strikes in the months that followed.
According to ONE, Adam had followed Bnei Yehuda since childhood, with family members regularly bringing him to matches at the club's home ground. He kept close tabs on the team on social media and once celebrated a birthday at Bnei Yehuda's training facility, a mark of just how central the orange-and-black club was to his life.
His mother, Mali, recalled that devotion as family and unit comrades were welcomed as guests of honour for the season-opening ceremony, an occasion the club used to formally fold Adam's memory into its own history.
"Adam, you were and will remain part of our orange family forever," the club said in a statement. "May your memory be blessed."
The gesture places Bnei Yehuda among a number of Israeli clubs that have used matchday ceremonies this season to honour supporters and former players lost during more than two years of fighting on multiple fronts, a grim but now familiar ritual across the country's stadiums.
