The High Court of Justice rejected a petition seeking to recognize Alon Shamriz as a fallen IDF soldier on Sunday, ruling that the law left it unable to grant the request despite what the judges described as his extraordinary courage in escaping Hamas captivity.
Justices David Mintz, Yael Willner, and Ofer Grosskopf unanimously upheld the military’s decision not to recognize Shamriz as having been on active service when he was killed, rejecting the petition filed by his parents, Avi and Dikla Shamriz.
The family had also sought to have him buried in a military cemetery and to be formally recognized as the parents of a fallen soldier.
Shamriz was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the Hamas-led October 7 massacre. After approximately 70 days in captivity, he escaped with fellow hostages Yotam Haim and Samer Talalka.
The three were mistakenly shot and killed by IDF soldiers in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood on December 15, 2023, after approaching the forces without shirts and with a white flag. They were subsequently recognized as civilian victims of terrorism.
The central question of the case: Had Alon entered military service by the time of his abduction?
At the center of the case was a narrow but decisive legal question: whether Shamriz had entered military service by the time he was abducted.
His family argued that Shamriz, an active reservist in the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit, had been called up on the morning of October 7 and would have joined his unit had he not been kidnapped. They also argued that his military training enabled him to plan and lead the escape from captivity and protect the other hostages once they reached the surface.
The military disputed that a formal call-up had been issued. It said a message sent to Shamriz and other reservists on October 7 was only an availability check, and that Shamriz was not included in a later automated call formally summoning part of the unit.
The court did not ultimately need to resolve that dispute.
Mintz ruled that even if Shamriz had been formally called to reserve duty, the law recognizes a reservist as a fallen soldier only if the fatal injury occurred during military service or while the person was traveling to or from the place where they were required to report.
Shamriz had already been kidnapped into Gaza by the time the alleged summons was issued. He therefore neither reported for service nor began traveling to his unit, the court found.
“The circumstances of Alon’s abduction and death are deeply distressing, and his success in escaping together with the two other hostages, with courage and strength, inspires amazement,” Mintz wrote. “Unfortunately, that does not allow him to be recognized as a fallen IDF soldier under the existing law.”
The court also rejected the family’s argument that the refusal discriminated against Shamriz compared with other civilians who had been recognized retroactively as reservists after their deaths.
The judges said they had examined each of the cases raised by the family, including confidential explanations provided by the military behind closed doors, and found that they involved different factual or legal circumstances.
In those cases, the individuals had been performing tasks that the military determined should have been carried out under formal reserve orders, but had not been properly called up because of an administrative failure.
An IDF order allowing the retroactive registration of reservists injured during emergency mobilization also did not apply, the court found, because it covers injuries sustained at a reporting point, a reception center, a military unit, or while traveling between them.
The distinction between a fallen soldier and a civilian victim is strictly technical and legal
Grosskopf said the distinction between a fallen soldier and a civilian victim was legally “formal and technical,” rather than a judgment about the person’s courage or contribution.
That formal test, he wrote, prevents the state from being forced to decide “between blood and blood” according to how bravely a person behaved before their death.
Shamriz, Grosskopf wrote, used the training he received as a combat soldier to escape his captors and lead his companions “to the threshold of freedom.” But those actions were carried out while he was legally a civilian rather than a serving soldier.
“As a court committed to the law of the state, we are obligated to act according to the law,” Grosskopf wrote, apologizing to the family that the court could not “do justice to Alon’s memory.”
Willner similarly wrote that Shamriz’s “supreme heroism” and “extraordinary resourcefulness” were beyond dispute, but that the law left the court unable to help.
Following the petition, the IDF established a committee to examine recognition for civilians and hostages who fought or displayed exceptional courage during the war.
The committee recommended legislation that would permit some civilians to be recognized as fallen soldiers under a narrow set of cumulative criteria. The defense minister and chief of staff chose not to pursue that recommendation and instead created a separate commemoration framework.
The military determined that Shamriz qualifies for that framework, which includes a civilian funeral with military elements if his grave is moved, recognition of his bravery on his gravestone and on the civilian memorial website, and an annual ceremony at the memorial hall for victims of terrorism. A military-style gravestone has already been placed on his temporary grave.
The court said it understood why that arrangement did not satisfy the family, but ruled that deciding whether to expand the legal definition of a fallen soldier was a policy choice for the government and Knesset, not the judiciary.
Yonatan Shimriz, Alon’s brother, called the decision “a slap in the face of the family” that had caused further and unjustified pain.
“This was a political decision from beginning to end, and it should never have had to reach the High Court in the first place,” he said.
He maintained that his brother had been called to reserve duty on October 7 and had operated in captivity as he had during his military service – through planning, leadership, and “unmatched courage.”
“Today, Alon was abandoned once again by the country he loved so much,” he said.
Shamriz said that he respected the court’s decision not to overturn the military’s position, although he believed the ruling was wrong.
It should serve as a warning to every soldier, he added: “The state is with you until you criticize its leaders.”
The family’s attorney, Ran Cohen Rochverger, said the ruling represented “a continuation of a grave injustice” based on formalism, and expressed hope that the state would still act to correct the decision.