Team News Riveting
Jerusalem, December 9
Former Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot received the news of his son Master Sgt. (res.) Gal Meir Eisenkot’s death while reviewing IDF operations against the Hamas terrorists in Gaza Strip.
The 25-year-old brave-heart gave the supreme sacrifice for his country and was killed in action fighting in the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Gal Eisenkot died after a bomb exploded in a tunnel shaft near soldiers in the Jabaliya camp in northern Gaza. He was rushed in grave condition to a hospital in Israel, where he succumbed his injuries.
The former IDF chief of staff is now a minister in the emergency government on behalf of Benny Gantz’s National Unity party and an observer on the high-level war cabinet leading the decision-making in the Gaza campaign. He received the news of his son’s death while reviewing IDF operations Thursday at the 162nd Division’s headquarters in southern Israel, alongside Gantz.
He spoke on Friday with a combination of heartbroken pain and military determination at the funeral of his son. He said, “Galush, love of our heart, I promise you that we will continue to be a unified and happy family, so that the great sacrifice by you and the other fallen will not be in vain, and we will be deserving of it.”
“I salute you, my beloved son. We love you forever — your father, mother and the whole family,” he said, adding: “Your loss will not be in vain.
Eisenkot said that when he met his son during last week’s truce, Gal was proud to have contributed to creating the conditions that helped enable the release of over 100 hostages — particularly the young children.
The seven-day truce in the last week of November saw 105 civilians released from Hamas captivity in Gaza, including 81 Israelis, 23 Thai nationals and one Filipino, in exchange for 210 Palestinian prisoners, all of them women or minors. Israel also allowed an influx of humanitarian aid into the Strip.
Still held hostage by Gaza terror groups when the truce collapsed were 137 people — 115 men, 20 women and two children.
Israel’s war against Hamas erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, when some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing over 240 hostages, mainly civilians.
