‘L’chaim, to all the soldiers, their families, their parents who support them’
Israeli security forces carry the casket of Wasim Mahmud, a member of Israel’s Druze community and one of eight soldiers killed a day earlier when the Namer armored vehicle they were traveling in exploded near Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, during his funeral in Beit Jann in northern Israel.
Agence France-Presse
Amikam, Israel — David, a 61-year-old Israeli, has been on edge ever since his soldier son was deployed to Gaza, where the war sparked by Hamas’ 7 October attack shows little sign of abating.
“As a father, I’m always nervous,” David told AFP at the family’s northern Israel home, just after his son Yonatan, 22, left to join his army unit in Rafah, the focus of recent fighting in the southern Gaza Strip.
The family has asked to use first names only for safety reasons.
David and other relatives of troops in Gaza have been left fearing for their loved ones and contemplating the war’s costs. For some, it is too much.
Yonatan has been among the tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers and reservists sent to Gaza in Israel’s withering military campaign, which the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory says has killed 37,337 people, mostly civilians.
The attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The deaths of 11 soldiers announced Saturday, including eight in an explosion near the southern city of Rafah, marked one of the heaviest losses for the Israeli military since the start of the war.
Yonatan’s mother Sharon, 53, said there were “really difficult days where I’m crying all the time.”
But “there is really a limit to how much you can cry,” she said.
To ease their nerves, the couple has joined weekly sessions with other parents.
At the latest meeting on Thursday, platters of watermelon and snacks lined the table as parents held up whiskey glasses for a toast to their loved ones.
“L’chaim, to all the soldiers, their families, their parents who support them,” said one attendee, using the Hebrew toast, which means “to life.”
War is “almost like Russian roulette,” said David, who fought during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s.
Back then, he was not scared, he said, but now as father he is worried for his son.
Yonatan had narrowly avoided death in Gaza recently, his father said, having just put on his helmet when an explosion rang out and shrapnel hit him.
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