Shortly after the ceasefire was declared in the war with Iran, I received a phone call from a bereaved mother. She confided in me her fear that, in the transition between war and a semblance of routine – and in the shadow of the ongoing fighting in Gaza – the people of Israel would forget the bereaved families. “We, who paid the ultimate price,” she said, “will be left behind.”
These are historic days. While the State of Israel strikes Iran, tries to understand the path forward in Gaza, or debates the “day after,” our sirens do not rise and fall. In the shelter or the safe room, our pain is constant. It penetrates and wounds more deeply than any missile, but no defense system can intercept it and there is no shelter that can protect from it.
In the battle for our lives and homeland, we have lost more than 25,000 sons and daughters. It is thanks to them that we are here; over 1,000 soldiers have fallen since the October 7 attack alone. Hundreds of families have joined the ever-growing circle of grief that Yad Labanim has been supporting since the founding of the state.
Living with grief and wounds reopened
A bereaved family is one that has lost a limb of its body. In times of war and emergency, our pain sharpens and deepens. It does not fade, even if public and media attention seems to have moved on. It does not ease with a return to routine or the signing of a ceasefire. Alongside the terrible loss itself, we face another burden: the sense that everyone else is moving on, while our world has been turned upside down.
What is difficult for all Israeli citizens is even more difficult for the bereaved. Every siren, every dash to the shelter, every news item cleared for publication, every announcement about a fallen soldier or a hostage – whether they returned or not – shakes us and reopens wounds that never fully healed.
Yad Labanim: emotional shelter for bereaved families
At Yad Labanim, we feel this reality every day. In recent months, the number of requests and calls to our organization has risen sharply.
Most of those reaching out are not asking for physical assistance. They do not seek pity. What they need is someone who will listen. Their overwhelming feeling is that the public’s attention to bereaved families is waning – just as our pain becomes more acute.
At Yad Labanim, we strive to be there for these families every day, all year round. We provide a supportive and embracing community, in both routine and crisis. We offer gatherings, workshops, and programs. Just in the past few weeks, during the war with Iran, we held over 4,000 phone conversations with bereaved family members, reminding them they are not alone.
Even when movement was restricted to essential activities, we continued meeting families over Zoom and maintained ongoing contact. We embraced them, even from a distance.
Yad Labanim serves as the emotional shelter for bereaved families. But this mission must not fall on our shoulders alone. Our sons and daughters fell so that all of us could live here.
And so, I turn to the citizens of Israel, and to our friends, both in Israel and around the world: In the midst of all the noise, tension, and threats – in the pause between wars and within the wars themselves – do not forget us, the bereaved families.
Remember that our pain does not fade, even as the days pass and the headlines change.
The writer is chairman of Yad Labanim.