Then, last month, the Israeli army made a devastating announcement based on battlefield intelligence gleaned during their ground operation in Gaza: The two men had been killed on Oct. 7, their bodies dragged into Gaza.
For the Perez family, the news was the first piece of information they’d 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, the families faced a grim decision: Should they put empty coffins into the ground, to comply with Jewish burial traditions stipulating immediate burial, or wait for an elusive cease-fire deal that would allow the release of their sons’ remains?
As the war hits the six-month mark, many Israeli families are still grappling with the consequences of the Oct. 7 attack.
The Perez family chose to hold a burial ceremony for Daniel, a 22-year-old tank commander, immediately after receiving the news, as was encouraged by the Israeli military rabbinate. The family put into the coffin Daniel’s blood, recovered from the tank in which he was killed, and his blood-soaked shirt, found 50 yards away, toward the border with Gaza.
The family was in shock at the news. But they were also, for the first time in five months, certain that he was not, and had not been, suffering in Hamas captivity.
“We worried you were cold, that you were not eating, that you were experiencing indescribable trauma,” said Shira Perez said at her brother’s funeral in Jerusalem. “But when the army told us the terrible news, a weight lifted from my heart because I knew that in the last 163 days you were with us, looking after us.”
Itay Chen’s father, Ruby, attended Daniel’s funeral. The two young men fought to defend their base and the civilians beyond it from the Hamas-led forces who stormed the border that October morning.
But the Chen family has not held a funeral or sat shiva for Itay, who was 19 and a dual Israeli and American citizen, saying his son’s body deserved the dignity of proper burial, and the family deserved a physical place where they can mourn. Seven other Israeli-Americans are still believed to be held in Gaza, together 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 not been able to hold funerals either; instead, many are placed in mass graves.
Mourning rituals interrupted
The Jewish schedule of grief follows a strict order intended to ease mourners into their new reality. Burial is immediate, followed by the shiva — or seven days — in which the mourners receive visitors at home.
During the shloshim — the 30 days after the death (or in this case, after the news of the death), men are forbidden from shaving or cutting their hair. For soldiers killed in combat, this is also when their military tombstone is unveiled. The one year mark officially ends the grieving period; for those killed on Oct. 7, it will be on the same date next year.
These mourning periods were put on hold for the Chen and Perez families, and the more than 30 other families told their children were missing, then being held hostage, then dead.
Itay’s death was determined by a joint U.S.-Israeli intelligence effort, but closure was impossible while the location and state of Itay’s body remained unknown, Ruby Chen said.
So the family was frozen in yet more uncertainty. “We’re in the universe of Oct. 7,” he said. “But somehow we need to be beamed back to this universe.”
Ruby Chen has been…
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