IDF widows will be able to remarry without fear of losing their IDF pensions, according to a legislative proposal just approved by a ministerial committee.
After a long public and internal Knesset struggle, the widows of IDF soldiers need no longer choose between remarrying – formally or otherwise – and retaining a major source of support. 
Mualem: “Stop asking how much it will cost, but rather, What does the State of Israel want to happen with IDF widows?"
The widows of terrorism victims are not included in the new amendment at present.
The law will be amended to state that even remarried widows will be considered family members of the deceased and eligible for state-sponsored pension funds. However, the Finance Ministry and government officials still insist that only part of the full pension be paid, and the matter will be debated in the coming days and weeks.
MK Uri Ariel (National Union), who co-sponsored the bill, said on Sunday, “The ministerial committee for legislation has proven that aside from maintaining the budget framework, the State has a heart, as well as a moral and humane obligation to the widows of the fallen who wish to open a new chapter in their lives.”
Rabbis' Positions
At least one rabbi was willing to take a large chance and officiate at the weddings of IDF widows without informing the authorities. Though he did not wish to identify himself, he said that he could not turn his back on the plight of women who had to choose between remaining unmarried and becoming totally dependent on their new husband.
Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, on the other hand, a prominent spokesman for the religious-Zionist Tzohar Rabbis Organization, said he could not justify clandestine weddings of this nature, but said that the law must be changed. He said that a compromise would be the preferred method, wherein the widows continue to receive part of their IDF pensions upon remarrying.
Shuli Mualem
Former Jewish Home-party Knesset candidate Shuli Mualem has been a prominent activist on behalf of the change in the law. Her first husband, Lt.-Col. Moshe Mualem, was the highest-ranking victim of the helicopter crash in 1997 in which over 70 soldiers and officers were killed. Two and a half years later, she decided to pick up the pieces of her life and remarry – and demonstratively did not register the marriage with the Interior Ministry. As in other cases, the Defense Ministry turned a blind eye and continued to pay her pension, but at the same time she continued to fight for the law to be changed.
“The essential change that I want to bring about is to stop asking how much it will cost,” Mualem wrote this week, “but rather, ‘What does the State of Israel want to happen with IDF widows?’ When they tell us, ‘With their deaths, they commanded us to live,’ do they mean only for themselves but not for the widows?”
The amended bill passed its preliminary reading in the previous Knesset, and must now pass three additional stages before becoming law. Decisions of the previous Knesset must be ratified, it must be debated in a Knesset committee, and it must pass its final readings in the Knesset.