As Gaza fighting grinds on, politicians eye the day after
It’s hard to find a bright spot in the darkness that has befallen the Eisenkot family. War cabinet member Gadi Eisenkot was in the command room of the Gaza Division when he received the news of his son Gal Meir’s death.
Eisenkot knew very well that his son Gal was on the front line, carrying out special operations in the heart of the Gaza Strip. With a father’s intuition, the former IDF chief of staff opted not to watch the soldiers’ body cam footage being streamed live in the command room.
At one point, Maj. Gen. Nadav Padan approached and reported in a broken voice that Eisenkot’s son had died after being critically wounded when an IED exploded at the entrance to a Jabaliya tunnel shaft.
Eisenkot went to his home in Herzliya to report the worst news of all to his wife and family. But the worse wasn’t over yet for the Eisenkot family. During Shabbos, even as the family sat shivah for their son Gal, Gadi Eisenkot’s nephew, Maor Cohen Eisenkot, fell in battle. The two cousins are named after their grandfather Meir, who immigrated from Morocco. This is what Israel looks like on Chanukah 5784. Bereavement follows bereavement. Not one candle, but two, snuffed out together — in the same family.
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