Then, last month, the Israeli military made a devastating announcement based on battlefield intelligence gleaned from its Gaza ground operation: the two men had been killed on October 7 and their bodies had been dragged to Gaza. .
For the Perez family, this news was the first information they had received since that day, “after 163 days of zero connection with our son,” Daniel’s father, Doron, said last month.
Amid new waves of grief, families faced a grim decision: whether to place empty coffins in the ground, comply with Jewish burial traditions stipulating immediate burial, or wait for a ceasefire agreement. elusive figure that would allow the release of their sons? remains?
As war approaches six months, many Israeli families are still dealing with the aftermath of the October 7 attack.
The Perez family chose to hold a funeral ceremony for Daniel, a 22-year-old tank commander, immediately after receiving the news, as encouraged by the Israeli military rabbinate. The family put Daniel’s blood, recovered from the tank in which he was killed, and his blood-soaked shirt, found 50 meters away, towards the Gaza border, into the coffin.
The family was in shock at this news. But they were also, for the first time in five months, certain that he was not suffering and had not suffered in Hamas captivity.
“We were afraid that you would be cold, that you wouldn’t eat, that you would suffer indescribable trauma,” Shira Perez said at her brother’s funeral in Jerusalem. “But when the army told us the terrible news, a weight was lifted from my heart because I knew that for the last 163 days, you were with us and caring for us. »
Itay Chen’s father, Ruby, attended Daniel’s funeral. The two young men fought to defend their base and civilians beyond from Hamas-led forces who stormed the border that October morning.
But the Chen family did not hold a funeral or sit Shiva for Itay, who was 19 and has dual Israeli and American citizenship, saying her son’s body deserved the dignity of a proper burial and that the family deserved a physical place where they could grieve. Seven other Israeli-Americans are believed to remain detained in Gaza, along with more than 120 Israeli hostages.
The Israeli ground operation in Gaza has killed more than 33,000 people there, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. In Gaza, thousands of families have also been unable to organize funerals; instead, many are placed in mass graves.
Mourning rituals interrupted
The Jewish mourning calendar follows a strict order intended to make it easier for mourners to integrate into their new reality. Burial is immediate, followed by Shiva — or seven days – during which mourners receive visitors in their homes.
During the shloshim — THE 30 days after death (or in this case, after death has been announced), men are prohibited from shaving or cutting their hair. For soldiers killed in combat, it is also on this occasion that their military tombstone is revealed. The one-year deadline officially ends the mourning period; for those killed on October 7, it will be the same date next year.
These periods of mourning were suspended for the Chen and Perez families, and more than 30 other families reported that their children had disappeared, then held hostage, then died.
Itay’s death was determined by a joint U.S.-Israeli intelligence effort, but closure was impossible as long as the location and condition of Itay’s body remained unknown, Ruby Chen said.
The family therefore found itself stuck in even more uncertainty. “We’re in the October 7 universe,” he said. “But somehow we have to be returned to this universe.”
Ruby Chen was among delegations of hostage families who traveled to Washington to advocate for action and attended President Biden’s State of the Union address last month. Biden called Ruby Chen after Itay was pronounced dead, speaking “as a father who knows what it means to lose a son,” Ruby said.
Ruby Chen told Biden and other U.S. officials who called following the announcement that her family’s trip was not over and — just as when her son was classified as a hostage — urged them to use every possible lever to bring him home. “Itay deserves the minimum of dignity, carrying out his duty for his country, for Western values, and so we need him to have a place, and also we need a place,” he said .
The families of the hostages were left hanging in excruciating suffering during an “inhumane time”, said Ran Pelled, a clinical psychologist who provides counseling at the Forum for Families of Hostages and Missing Persons, the communities’ umbrella organization.
It remains unclear what effect this suspense and delays in the Jewish grieving process would have on families, Pelled said. “They have been living in tension for months, between the hope of being reunited with their loved ones and the possibility that that might not happen. »
They experienced “another rollercoaster of emotions” amid sporadic reports of progress in ceasefire negotiations and a trickle of death announcements, he said. After the death of hostages, the community mourns the deceased as it would its own relative, he added, while “also knowing that the security forces have discovered something… and that these may be they who will learn something later.”
Israel has so far extracted the bodies of 12 hostages from Gaza, including from al-Shifa hospital and underground tunnels, the latest on Saturday, in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. But dozens of other bodies of people of various nationalities would still be there. Israel believes the remaining hostages, both living and dead, are being used by Hamas as human shields as fighting continues in the southern Gaza Strip.
Obtaining information on the condition of the hostages has become increasingly difficult.
“Hamas treats hostages not as human beings, but as assets,” said Refael Franco, former deputy head of Israel’s National Cybersecurity Directorate, who led the search for the hostages at the start of the war.
As the first reports – videos of hostages broadcast live by Hamas, then testimonies from freed hostages – dried up and the fighting became less intense, Israel has returned in recent weeks to interrogation methods more “classic”, made possible by raids and arrests of hostages. suspected terrorists, he said.
An Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive process, said Israeli intelligence agencies cross-check intelligence from interrogations, forensic evidence and camera footage with the bases of national data in Israel and those found in servers hidden in underground tunnels in Gaza. Information also comes from blood, hair or, sometimes, body parts found in Gaza.
Adir Tahar, a Golani Brigade sniper, was killed while fighting Hamas-led forces storming the Erez crossing in northern Gaza on October 7. His father David said eyewitnesses said, and video showed, that Adir’s head was shot off on the battlefield.
As a practicing Jew, David buried his son on October 10 in an effort to follow Jewish guidelines against allowing “the soul to remain unattached.” David and the family then sat down Shiva.
Two months later, however, Israeli soldiers returned to him the crushed bones of his son’s skull, which he said had been found in Gaza. David dug up his son’s coffin for a second burial.
It “took me back to Adir’s death, it was difficult,” says David. “But at least I knew that the army had managed, as much as possible, to help me bury him as completely as possible.”
Miriam Berger contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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