They were thought to be hostages in Gaza. Israeli raids found they were dead.

Then, final month, the Israeli military made a devastating announcement primarily based on battlefield intelligence gleaned throughout their floor operation in Gaza: The 2 males had been killed on Oct. 7, their our bodies dragged into Gaza.

For the Perez household, the information was the primary piece of knowledge they’d acquired since that day, “after 163 days of zero reference to our son,” Daniel’s father Doron stated final month.

Amid new waves of grief, the households confronted a grim resolution: Ought to they put empty coffins into the bottom, to adjust to Jewish burial traditions stipulating fast burial, or look ahead to an elusive cease-fire deal that might enable the discharge of their sons’ stays?

Because the warfare approaches the six-month mark, many Israeli households are nonetheless grappling with the implications of the Oct. 7 assault.

The Perez household selected to carry a burial ceremony for Daniel, a 22-year-old tank commander, instantly after receiving the information, as was inspired by the Israeli army rabbinate. The household put into the coffin Daniel’s blood, recovered from the tank by which he was killed, and his blood-soaked shirt, discovered 50 yards away, towards the border with Gaza.

The household was in shock on the information. However they had been additionally, for the primary time in 5 months, sure that he was not, and had not been, struggling in Hamas captivity.

“We anxious you had been chilly, that you weren’t consuming, that you simply had been experiencing indescribable trauma,” stated Shira Perez stated at her brother’s funeral in Jerusalem. “However when the military instructed us the horrible information, a weight lifted from my coronary heart as a result of I knew that within the final 163 days you had been with us, taking care of us.”

Itay Chen’s father, Ruby, attended Daniel’s funeral. The 2 younger males fought to defend their base and the civilians past it from the Hamas-led forces who stormed the border that October morning.

However the Chen household has not held a funeral or sat shiva for Itay, who was 19 and a twin Israeli and American citizen, saying his son’s physique deserved the dignity of correct burial, and the household deserved a bodily place the place they will mourn. Seven different Israeli-People are nonetheless believed to be held in Gaza, along with greater than 120 Israeli hostages.

The Israeli floor operation in Gaza has killed greater than 33,000 individuals there, in keeping with the Gaza Well being Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. In Gaza, 1000’s of households haven’t been capable of maintain funerals both; as an alternative, many are positioned in mass graves.

Mourning rituals interrupted

The Jewish schedule of grief follows a strict order supposed to ease mourners into their new actuality. Burial is fast, adopted by the shiva — or seven days — by which the mourners obtain guests at house.

Throughout the shloshim — the 30 days after the dying (or on this case, after the information of the dying), males are forbidden from shaving or reducing their hair. For troopers killed in fight, that is additionally when their army tombstone is unveiled. The one yr mark formally ends the grieving interval; for these killed on Oct. 7, it will likely be on the identical date subsequent yr.

These mourning intervals had been placed on maintain for the Chen and Perez households, and the greater than 30 different households instructed their kids had been lacking, then being held hostage, then lifeless.

Itay’s dying was decided by a joint U.S.-Israeli intelligence effort, however closure was unimaginable whereas the situation and state of Itay’s physique remained unknown, Ruby Chen stated.

So the household was frozen in but extra uncertainty. “We’re within the universe of Oct. 7,” he stated. “However by some means we should be beamed again to this universe.”

Ruby Chen has been among the many delegations of hostages’ households to go Washington to plead for motion, and attended President Biden’s State of the Union tackle final month. Biden referred to as Ruby Chen after Itay was pronounced lifeless, talking “as a father who is aware of what it means to lose a son,” Ruby stated.

Ruby Chen instructed Biden and different U.S. officers who referred to as within the wake of the information that his household’s journey was not over, and — simply as when his son was categorised as a hostage — urged them to make use of all attainable leverage to deliver him house. “Itay deserves the minimal dignity, falling within the line of obligation for his nation, for Western values, and so we want for him to have a spot, and likewise, for us to have a spot,” he stated.

Households of hostages have been suspended in agony for an “inhuman time frame,” stated Ran Pelled, a scientific psychologist who has been working counseling on the Hostages and Lacking Individuals’ Households Discussion board, the umbrella group for the communities.

It was nonetheless unclear what impact this suspense, and the delays within the Jewish strategy of grieving, would have on the households, Pelled stated. “They’ve lived in rigidity for months, between hopes that they may have their family members again of their arms, and the opportunity of that not taking place.”

They’ve skilled “new curler coasters of feelings” amid sporadic reviews of developments in cease-fire negotiations and a trickle of dying bulletins, he stated. After the deaths of hostages, the neighborhood mourns the deceased as they might their very own relative, he added, whereas “additionally realizing that the safety forces have uncovered one thing … that they is likely to be those to study one thing subsequent.”

Israel has to date extracted the our bodies of 12 hostages from Gaza, together with from al-Shifa Hospital and underground tunnels, the most recent on Saturday, from the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis. However dozens extra our bodies of individuals from a wide range of nationalities are believed to stay there. Israel believes the remaining hostages, alive and lifeless, are being utilized by Hamas as human shields as preventing continues within the south of Gaza Strip.

Getting info on the state of hostages has change into more and more troublesome.

“Hamas treats hostages not as human beings, however as property,” stated Refael Franco, former deputy head of Israel’s Nationwide Cyber Directorate, who ran hostage monitoring within the early days of the warfare.

As early intel — Hamas live-streamed movies of hostages, then the testimonies from released hostages — has dried up and preventing has turns into much less intense, Israel has in current weeks returned to extra “traditional interrogation” strategies, made attainable by raids and arrests of suspected terrorists, he stated.

An Israeli official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate the delicate course of, stated Israeli intelligence businesses cross examine intelligence from interrogations, forensic proof and digicam footage in opposition to nationwide databases each in Israel and people present in servers hidden in subterranean tunnels in Gaza. Info additionally comes from blood, hair or, generally, physique elements discovered inside Gaza.

Adir Tahar, a sniper from the Golani Brigade, was killed whereas battling Hamas-led forces storming Gaza’s northern Erez crossing on Oct. 7. His father David stated eyewitnesses stated, and video confirmed, Adir’s head was shot off on the battleground.

As an observant Jew, David buried his son on Oct. 10 in an try to observe Jewish directives in opposition to permitting “the soul to stay untethered.” David and the household then sat shiva.

Two months later, although, Israeli troopers returned to him the crushed bones of his son’s cranium, which he stated was present in Gaza. David dug up his son’s coffin for a second funeral.

It “introduced me again to Adir’s dying, it was troublesome,” stated David. “However, no less than, I knew that the military succeeded, as a lot as attainable, to assist me bury him as entire as attainable.”

Miriam Berger contributed reporting from Jerusalem.