Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met today with widows and orphans from the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization, ahead of this year's Memorial Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars and Victims of Hostile Acts.
"How does one live with the grief? It is very difficult, and I can tell you that we all feel it," he told the group. "I lost my eldest brother, and it was as if someone took an axe and cut off my arm and my leg. Then someone came to me during the Shiva and told me that he also lost a brother - he was a bereaved brother. He said to me: "I know you won't believe me, but the torment you are going through will not always have this intensity or such agony as you feel now; there is life after this."
"There are also new chapters, and you will have new lives and new joys. Joys will come. I know it's hard to believe right now, but they will."
"But the greatest thing I can tell you: it is not in vain. It is not in vain, because without them, we have no existence. We are here thanks to the heroes, our chain of heroes. Therefore, your parents are heroes; and you, with the pain, the memory, and the void, have one thing that you know: your fathers are the ones who ensure the eternity of Israel."
The Prime Minister spoke personally with each of the family members and even painted an elepant with Shaked Meir, the son of Maj. (Res.) David Meir who fell in the battle for Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7.
"Your parents are heroes," Netanyahu told the orphans, "and the resilience you display is an integral part of the resilience of the entire State of Israel."