(JTA) — Hundreds gathered on Sunday night at Israel’s military cemetery on Mt. Herzl for the funeral of Moshe Yitzchak Hacohen Katz, an American-born Israeli soldier who was killed by a rocket strike on Saturday in southern Lebanon.

Katz, 22, from New Haven, Connecticut, is the fifth Israeli soldier killed in Lebanon since Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy in Lebanon, resumed attacks on Israel following a 2024 ceasefire, after Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran last month.

“With unspeakable tragedy I regret to inform you that my 22 year old son Moshe Yitzchak a*h a sergeant in the idf, fell in battle in Lebanon,” Katz’s father, Mendy, wrote in a post on Facebook on Saturday. “My oldest Son with a zest for life and jokes. Burial is tomorrow in israel. Maybe we only share good news. My heart is shattered and the wound is real.”

Mendy Katz had been in Israel when the war began and posted on March 7 about witnessing his son’s graduation from basic training with the Israel Defense Forces before returning to the United States via Egypt.

During the funeral on Sunday, Katz, who was posthumously promoted from corporal to sergeant and was affiliated with Chabad, was eulogized by a host of fellow soldiers who referred to him as a “true friend” who “always used to make sure that anyone around him was always taken care of.”

“Moshe was a brave soldier, we have proof of that, but more than that, he was a loyal friend, he was a hard-working son and a loving, caring brother,” Adina, Katz’s sister, said between tears during her eulogy. “Moshe’s body might be gone, but his legacy is not. He was a proud soldier and a proud Jew, and we are the proudest family.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered condolences to Katz’s family in a post on X and wished a speedy recovery to three other soldiers moderately wounded in the attack.

“Moshe z”l immigrated to the land from the United States, enlisted in the Paratroopers Brigade, and fought bravely for the defense of our homeland,” Netanyahu wrote. “On behalf of all Israeli citizens, we embrace Moshe z”l’s family in this difficult hour and wish a swift and complete recovery to our fighters who were wounded in that incident.”

On Sunday, Netanyahu announced that he had instructed the Israeli military to further expand its operations in Lebanon in order to “finally thwart the threat of invasion and to push the anti-tank missile ​fire away from our border.”

Menachem Geisinsky, a photographer and friend of Katz’s, also eulogized him in a post on Facebook, writing that he “forever will be my hero” for “his bravery in coming all the way from New Haven, Connecticut to fight for what he believed was right and also for being a man who wouldn’t tolerate a frown.”

“So be like Moshe. Be a hero. Make someone’s day. Make someone giggle or smile,” wrote Geisinsky. “Step up, and be the man Moshe was, and forever will be remembered as.”

Katz is survived by his parents, Mendy and Devorah Katz; siblings Adina, Yehuda, Shua and Dubi; and grandparents.

The post Israeli-American soldier Moshe Katz, killed in Lebanon rocket strike, laid to rest on Mt. Herzl appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — TEL AVIV — On the morning she left Jerusalem for a health retreat for bereaved mothers, Taly Drori was surprised to recognize another woman in her rideshare. More than two years earlier, they had often crossed paths in the intensive care unit of the same hospital, where their sons were being treated in neighboring rooms.

The woman was Hazel Brief, the mother of Yona, an American-Israeli soldier who was seriously wounded at Kibbutz Kfar Aza in the opening hours of the Oct. 7 attack. Drori’s son, Chanan, also a soldier, was severely injured in Gaza in December of that year.

Both women spent long nights watching their sons fight to graduate from intensive care into rehabilitation, a milestone neither reached. Consumed by their sons’ care, they barely spoke. When they passed each other in the ICU hallway of Sheba Medical Center, Brief said, it was often just “a nod and a look in the eyes, to say, I got you. I get you.”

After two months, Chanan died from a fungal infection. A year later, Yona followed.

The retreat, held in the Gilboa region in northern Israel, offered a different kind of rehabilitation, Brief said, a “sacred space” where hallway nods gave way to a shared language of grief, as mothers try to rebuild themselves.

The gathering was part of a new initiative by OneFamily, an Israeli nonprofit that supports families of terror victims and fallen soldiers. Its impact is so significant that founder Chantal Belzberg was awarded the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement last week, the highest civilian honor awarded by the Israeli government — at a time when more Israelis are unfortunately joining its constituency.

“I am moved not because of myself, but because of the people for whom OneFamily was created: bereaved parents, widows, orphans, bereaved siblings, double orphans, and the wounded, with visible and invisible wounds,” Belzberg said in a statement. “This prize is, first and foremost, recognition of them. It is an embrace for the thousands of families who continue to carry this country, even when their hearts are broken.”

Belzberg’s daughter, Michal Belzberg-Slovin, is a yoga instructor who embraced Drori’s suggestion for a weekly health-and-wellness circle for bereaved mothers, centered on movement, mindfulness and nutrition. During the current war, meetings are taking place in a bomb shelter. But before it began, Belzberg-Slovin led 10 weeks of Wednesday sessions before the group traveled north together.

The program draws more than a dozen women, ranging from their early 40s to late 70s, all bereaved mothers of soldiers except one whose son was killed at the Nova music festival. It was originally intended for mothers bereaved in the current war, but the flyer OneFamily circulated omitted that detail. As a result, several mothers who had lost sons years earlier joined the circle as well. Belzberg-Slovin called it a happy accident, saying their presence was “very strengthening and healing,” and that it offered newer members a glimpse of how life can reshape itself around loss over time.

After Chanan’s death, Drori said she felt grief register physically before she could process it emotionally. “My life energy was draining away from me,” she said. She described chest spasms, sleeplessness and difficulty concentrating. At one point, she struggled even to stand upright. “I felt like I was made of lead.”

The next summer, she and her husband Roni spent several weeks at a health retreat on a kibbutz in northern Israel, a change of scenery that coincided with the war with Iran. The days were structured around nature walks, breathing exercises, yoga and simple, clean meals.

“The place slowly brought us back to life,” she said. That experience, she said, convinced her that bereavement requires deliberate physical care as well as emotional support, because “grief and trauma are stored in the body.”

Drori took the experience and pitched it to OneFamily as a half-day program to fit into the routines of women juggling work, family and mourning. Belzberg-Slovin bought into the idea immediately.

“This is my language,” she said, describing years of yoga, reflexology and aromatherapy.

Belzberg-Slovin had grown up around OneFamily, which her parents founded in 2001 after the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem, inspired by her decision as a bat mitzvah-age girl to forgo a party and redirect the money to victims and their families.

The Wednesday circles became even more of a family affair when her husband, Nadav, stepped in to cook the group’s vegan meal.

While not bereaved herself, Belzberg-Slovin said her own uneven path into adulthood has made her attuned to other people’s pain. She recalled a childhood in which terror victims and their families were always in her home, and a young adulthood marked by hurdles, including an eating disorder, cycling though career paths and remaining single long after most of her peers were married.

“I’m not one of them but something in my upbringing gave me the sensitivity to be fully with them in this process,” she said of the women in her circle.

Yoga and OneFamily, she said, were the two constants. “OneFamily has always been my identity. I always went back to it,” she said. Now, married with two children and a third on the way, she said she finally feels she is arriving on her own terms. “Now I’m bringing my new self into OneFamily which is special for me.”

The circle incorporates trauma-sensitive yoga, adapting an approach often used with survivors of sexual abuse and other trauma. The emphasis, Belzberg-Slovin said, is not on achieving a pose but on slowing down and respecting where the body is holding. A second yoga teacher, who is also a licensed therapist, facilitates the group discussion afterward.

She described one participant who shared that she found it hard to enter a supermarket because she saw reminders of her son everywhere. “How do you get from yoga poses to speaking about grocery shopping? But that’s what happens,” Belzberg-Slovin said. “We bring up everything the body raises.”

One of the veteran bereaved mothers on the retreat was Ruhama Davino, whose son was killed nearly 12 years ago during the 2014 conflict in Gaza. Davino said she kept her relationship with OneFamily at arm’s length, speaking by phone but repeatedly declining invitations to attend programs. “Every time they called, I said no,” she said. “I wanted to stay far from the bereavement and just continue my life.”

She doesn’t know what made her finally show up to the Wednesday health circle after so many years, but she left the first time without any doubt that she would be back, she said. “It’s powerful to be there, to be part of it, to draw strength.” Being in a room with mothers newly bereaved, alongside others who have lived with loss for years, changed her mind. “In the end, each of us needs this for the body and the soul,” she said.

Before the war, Chanan Drori had been studying biotechnology at Hadassah College and was preparing to begin his final research project in a medical research lab. After his death, the lab launched a research track in his name focused on infectious fungi, the complication that ultimately killed him.

“Chanan dreamed of helping people for whom no cure existed,” Drori said. “He dreamed of developing those medicines, so we felt like the best way to commemorate him was by realizing his dream.”

Chanan was treated at Sheba by Dafna Yahav, the head of its infectious diseases unit, who also treated Yona. Brief credited Yahav with pushing to bring in experimental drugs from overseas and said she never approached the family as a case first. “With all her accolades and running departments and being a world renowned expert, she’s an incredible human before being an incredible doctor,” Brief said. “She always responded first as a mom talking to another mom.”

Although the timelines were different — Yona was hospitalized for 417 days and Chanan for two months — Brief said the two mothers shared a form of loss that is hard to explain even to families of other soldiers who receive their news in an instant, with a knock at the door.

The similarities didn’t end there. Both men had volunteered to serve. Chanan did not meet criteria for a combat role, and Yona was exempt after he was wounded by an exploding pipe bomb months before Oct. 7. Both men loved music. OneFamily helped bring a piano for Yona, who played piano and guitar, into the hospital.

Both men and their families believed they would survive. Despite sustaining 13 bullet wounds and enduring repeated complications during his hospitalization, Brief said she expected Yona to “make it.”

Three weeks before Chanan died, doctors woke him from a medically induced coma and the family brought musicians to play at his bedside, including Yagel Harush, a singer he loved. The family invited Harush back to sing at the celebration they expected to hold after Chanan’s recovery, and at his wedding to his fiancée, Rivka.

“He was supposed to live,” Drori said.

Instead, this winter, two weeks after Drori returned from the north, Harush performed at a memorial event for the second anniversary of Chanan’s death.

When Drori met Brief again at the retreat, the two women posed for a photo to send to Yahav. Brief said she didn’t want to describe the retreat as “nice” or “comforting,” because nothing offers real consolation — “there’s no nechama,” she said, using the Hebrew word for solace. But OneFamily, she said, offered something she struggled to find elsewhere.

“You so often feel abnormal in society and here all of a sudden you feel normal,” she said. “Here’s another mom that knows what it’s like to see her son in intensive care for an extended period of time. I can’t share that with many people.”

The post Their sons survived the battlefield but not their wounds. Now these Israeli mothers mourn together. appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday reiterated his condemnation of settler violence in the West Bank after more than 1,000 Diaspora Jews signed a letter last week urging him to intervene.

In a letter published on X, Herzog thanked the letter’s signatories for their concerns regarding the “recent surge of violence by extremist elements in Judea and Samaria,” using the Hebrew name for the West Bank.

“At a time when Israel is in the throes of a bitter war against enemies that seek its destruction, and the Jewish people is contending with a fierce and rising tide of antisemitism around the world, this kind of violence against innocents further plays directly into the hands of Israel’s detractors, fueling hatred that weakens us as a nation and jeopardizes Jews everywhere,” the letter read.

Herzog’s letter comes as pressure mounts on Israel to crack down on tensions and violence in the West Bank, including from the United States and after a CNN crew filmed its tense encounter with soldiers in the region over the weekend.

In the first 25 days of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, there were 257 incidents of extremist settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, with settlers allegedly killing seven Palestinians, according to the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din. Such attacks often go unpunished by Israeli authorities.

Herzog said he had spoken with Israeli government security and law enforcement officials to call for an “immediate end to this unacceptable phenomenon.”

But while the Israeli president has previously condemned the spate of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the rise in such attacks in recent months has intensified pressure on him to take action in addressing the issue.

On Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Paris that the U.S. was “concerned” by the rise in violence, adding that President Donald Trump has “expressed very clearly that he is against any sort of a change in the status quo in the West Bank.”

“We’ve expressed our concern about it, and obviously I think the Israelis themselves have expressed concern,” Rubio said. “And so you’ve seen that some of these groups and individuals – maybe they’re settlers, maybe they’re just street thugs, but they’ve attacked security forces – Israelis as well. So I think you’ll see the government there do something about it.”

The same day, the American Jewish Committee called on the Israeli government to “ensure that all individuals who engage in violence or incitement — regardless of identity — are held accountable under the law.”

“At this sensitive and consequential moment, rejecting extremism and reaffirming a commitment to the rule of law is critical,” the statement read. “The long-term security and well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians depend on preserving the possibility of a future grounded in safety, dignity, and coexistence.”

The calls for accountability came amid escalating tensions on the ground, including an incident last Thursday in which Israeli soldiers detained and allegedly assaulted a CNN crew that was reporting on a settler attack and an illegal outpost near the Palestinian village of Tayasir in the West Bank.

A video of the incident released by CNN showed the journalists held at gunpoint by reservists for two hours, while a photojournalist was seen being choked and thrown to the ground.

During the confrontation, the soldiers could be heard saying that the West Bank belongs to Jews and that they were carrying out “revenge” for the death of settler activist Yehuda Sherman a week earlier. Sherman died in a car accident whose circumstances are not clear.

“Listen, at the end of the day, if the state doesn’t address what they did — those who murdered the settler… what do you expect us to do?” one soldier asks.

On Monday, the IDF announced that Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli army’s chief of staff, had ordered the removal of the reserve battalion from the West Bank.

“This is a grave ethical incident that is out of line with IDF norms and values. We all swore the soldier’s oath upon enlistment, weapons are to be used solely for the purpose of carrying out the mission, and never for revenge,” Zamir said in a statement on Monday. “We will not accept such incidents within the ranks of the IDF.”

The post IDF suspends unit that detained CNN crew in the West Bank, as Herzog condemns settler violence appeared first on The Forward.