(Amikam) “He is currently on his way to Rafah”: When Sharon and David receive AFP in their home in northern Israel, their 22-year-old son is returning to fight in southern Gaza. They will try to deceive the anxiety with other parents of soldiers.
Since October 7, several hundred thousand soldiers and reservists have been mobilized. When the Palestinian Islamist Hamas launched a bloody attack in southern Israel, Sharon and David’s son Yonatan was doing his mandatory military service.
“As a father, I’m always nervous,” says David, 61, about his son being on the front lines.
“It’s almost Russian roulette,” adds, kippah on his head, this businessman and former soldier in the Lebanese war in the 1980s who, like his wife, prefers to keep his name secret to avoid identifying his child.
“There are really difficult days where I cry all the time,” adds Sharon, 53, then “good days”, more numerous, assures this mother of six children.
At the end of each Shabbat, when they turn their phones back on after being disconnected for 24 hours, Sharon and David feel a sinking feeling in their stomachs. This Saturday, the army announced the death of eight soldiers near Rafah in the explosion of their vehicle. Yonatan is not one of them.
To support each other, the couple invites friends almost every week, also separated from their children by the war.
““Lechaim” to all the soldiers, their families and their parents”: glasses of whiskey in hand, watermelon and other appetizers on the table, five couples toast “to life” in Hebrew.
Laughter is as frequent as solemn moments, like when Sharon, an Israeli-American, remembers September 11, 2001. She, who lived very close to New York and had worked in a building next to the World Trade Center, draws a parallel between these attacks and the attack of October 7, among the “worst disasters committed by people against others,” she believes.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped that day by commandos of the Islamist movement, 116 remain detained, including 41 considered dead by the army.
Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas, in power in Gaza. Its retaliatory operations have killed more than 37,300 people in the devastated Palestinian territory, according to figures from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry.
David assures him, his son told him that he had to “eliminate Hamas” and “finish this war,” otherwise his “children will do it.”
According to a March-April Pew Research Center study, nearly two-thirds of Israelis surveyed believe their country will “likely” (27%) or “definitely” (40%) succeed in achieving its objectives against Hamas.
But some parents of soldiers are upset.
“Eight months of hell,” breathes Julie, 55, who prefers to be identified by her first name only. “Hell, hell, hell.”
This Friday, June 7, exactly eight months after the attacks, around thirty people demonstrated in front of the house of Yoav Gallant, Minister of Defense, in Amikam (north of Tel Aviv).
Their t-shirts and signs read the same words: “Parents of soldiers cry: ‘Enough’.”
Since the Gaza ground operation began on October 27, 309 soldiers have been killed, according to the army.
“At first this war was just. Not anymore,” says Ruth (first name changed), 58, for whom the sole objective of operations should be to bring the hostages and then the soldiers “home”, rather than the destruction of Hamas.
“Hamas is an ideological movement. We cannot suppress an ideological movement,” thinks, unlike many Israelis, Alon Shirizly, 78, who has two grandchildren in the army, including one in Gaza.
In the rally, as everywhere, Israeli flags are legion. “We are very patriotic, we love this country,” Lital says.
“The soldiers are exhausted too,” she cries. “My son came home twice very, very sick.”
“Every time there is a knock at the door, we are afraid that it is the army coming to tell us that our son has been killed,” confides Yifat Gadot, 48. “I would not be able to continue living in Israel if my son dies or is injured for nothing.”
