Israel pays tribute to its dead soldiers, especially those who fell during the conflict against Hamas

Never in 50 years since the Yom Kippur War have so many Israeli soldiers lost their lives in one year. At issue: the attacks of October 7 and the fighting against Hamas.

Israel celebrates Monday May 13 Yom Hazikaron, the tribute to its dead soldiers. A particularly necessary day this year: in one year, between May 13, 2023 and May 13, 2024, 1,594 people died. Among them, 40 children, 68 foreigners but also 598 soldiers and 113 members of the police. Most, 822 in all, died on the day of the October 7 massacre, the rest during the seven months of war in Gaza that followed.

Sharaf lost her sister Adar on October 7. She led a unit of 25 soldiers at a military base near the border with Gaza. “About a hundred rockets fell into the base. And then she wrote to me that there was gunfire, Sharaf recalls. The terrorists arrived at the entrance to the base. There was fighting for about an hour. The terrorists had grenades, rocket launchers. Adar and the other commanders just had their automatic weapons. They fought until the last bullet, until their last breath.”

“A lot of people from this generation who are 19, 20, 21 years old have been killed. There’s nothing harder than that.”

Sharaf, about his sister and her battalion killed in action

at franceinfo

Adar was 20 years old, she died on the front line, protecting a hundred other less experienced soldiers, who had remained in the shelters. “This is our country and we have to suffer, experience things like this and lose a lot of generations. Unfortunately, this is what we have to do to be able to live here and to protect our country“, believes Sharaf.

The criticized military strategy

Not all those close to soldiers have, or no longer have, this conviction. Anat fears for her son in his third and final year of military service. Since the start of Israel’s offensive, it has been fighting in Gaza. “In this war, there is no plan. The government does not know what to do the next day, to replace Hamas. And that is because we see that there is no horizon, that we understand that our sons pay the pricelaments Anat. And as parents, that’s something we can’t accept.”

Along with 600 other parents of soldiers, Anat sent a letter to the Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff to denounce the government’s strategy and call for an end to the war.