Defense Ministry weighs legal status for fallen soldiers' girlfriends

The Defense Ministry is reportedly weighing giving the girlfriends and fiancees of fallen soldiers special legal status. Deputy Defense Minister Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan (Habayit Hayehudi) said Tuesday he would make sure the issue would be discussed by the relevant ministry officials.

On Tuesday, the Knesset held a ceremony honoring the fiancees and girlfriends of fallen soldiers. The ceremony was organized by Yesh Atid MK Aliza Lavie and Zionist Union MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin in conjunction with the Defense Ministry-funded support group Girlfriends of Fallen IDF Soldiers. A group of 40 bereaved women participated in the event and told their stories.

Ben-Dahan and Lavie met with Edna Sarussi, the fiancee of Lt. Hadar Goldin, and Tal Iluz, the fiancee of Lt. Natan Cohen, soldiers killed in Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014. Goldin's body is still being held by Hamas.

Ben-Dahan told the women that "the Defense Ministry was unfamiliar with this issue and has not expressed an opinion on it. We need to study the matter and discuss it sensitively."

Sarussi said, "Hadar went to war a month before we were supposed to be married. It's important that the Defense Ministry take responsibility for this subject and do everything it can on behalf of those who were hurt and left behind."

Girlfriends and fiancees of fallen soldiers are not notified of their partners' deaths by either the military or the Defense Ministry, and do not receive official invitations to memorial ceremonies. Iluz said that in the three years since Operation Protective Edge, she and Sarussi had only been able to take part in ceremonies thanks to the good people who embraced them.

"We need institutionalized support and recognition from the Defense Ministry," Iluz said.

Lavie said, "This meeting highlights that bereavement and grief don't skip over anyone. The situation in which religious fiancees are not recognized simply because they do not live with their partners before the marriage [unlike many secular couples] is discriminatory and does a great wrong to these women, and must be corrected."

Under the current law, a girlfriend or fiancee can be eligible for benefits if she and her partner lived together. Each case is evaluated individually, and the input of friends and family carries weight.

"The girlfriends of fallen IDF soldiers have been absent from the [public] mourning for years, and were forced to confront their private loss almost alone, without help," Nahmias-Verbin said.

Habayit Hayehudi MK Shuli Mualem-Rafaeli, herself an IDF widow, said she knew from up close the pain and loss experienced by bereaved girlfriends and fiancees.

"In the helicopter disaster [of 1997, when two IDF helicopters crashed, killing 73 soldiers and officers] an enormous number of women lost their boyfriends -- about 50 women for whom the loss became part of their lives that night. The environment doesn't understand the situation and expects the young woman to just continue on, because there was no wedding. Twenty years after the helicopter disaster, I see huge importance in recognizing and understanding the girlfriends' bereavement," she said.

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