Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara met in Jerusalem on Monday with a group of children of IDF soldiers who fell in battle and Israel Prison Service and Israel Police personnel who perished in the 2010 Carmel fire. The children told the prime minister and his wife about their families and their losses. They brought with them items that remind them of their fallen parents. Netanyahu told the children about his own experience with loss -- the prime minister's older brother Yoni, a Sayeret Matkal officer, was killed in the heroic 1976 Entebbe hostage-rescue mission. "I know exactly what you're going through," Netanyahu said. "You are very young, I was older than you when my brother fell. It was very hard for me too, and I thought that my life would always have a deep defect in it, like something was missing, right? First of all, that's true, but life afterward fills up with other things. It fills up and will fill up with other things. "You experience new things all the time, all the time. There are new things, new experiences, but this loss will always be there. The memory and the longing will always be there. But you will also have a lot of other things, I tell you this from experience. You will have a lot of happy things." Sara Netanyahu, the prime minister's wife, said, "It is important that you document and record your memories of your fathers, so that you will be able to tell your children about their grandfather." Also on Monday, the prime minister met with the parents of fallen IDF soldier Oron Shaul. The Golani Brigade soldier was killed during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, and his body was seized by Hamas. Shaul is classified as a fallen soldier whose burial place is unknown. The Prime Minister's Office provided no details about Monday's meeting between Netanyahu and Shaul's parents. A senior diplomatic official said Netanyahu did not provide Shaul's parents with any new information about efforts to have Shaul's body returned to Israel. The Shaul family said this marked the second straight year that Shaul's parents met with Netanyahu around Memorial Day. "Contact with military officials and the Prime Minister's Office has been maintained, but unfortunately there is nothing new regarding Oron's case," the family said.
Netanyahu talks of personal loss with children of fallen soldiers
Ahead of Memorial Day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells group of bereaved children, "I know exactly what you're going through" • Netanyahu also meets on Monday with the parents of fallen IDF soldier Oron Shaul, whose body has not been recovered.
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