One in ten Knesset members has lost a family member to war or terrorism

Israel is the only country where the memory of the dead is not a monument but a seat in parliament.

By Giulio Meotti, Middle East Forum

The 26th Israeli Knesset has been sworn in and has already set a record unmatched by any other parliament in the world.

Not only that, but to highlight once again what ‘apartheid’ looks like in Israel, the Arab lawmakers—elected in record numbers—walked out during the national anthem after taking their seats in the chamber in protest against the very state they were elected to serve.

This Knesset also has the highest number of women since the state’s foundation, at thirty percent (the same percentage as in Italy).

The real news is that one in ten MPs has had to bury a family member due to terrorism or war.

More than a House of Representatives, it is a chamber of survivors. Israel is the only country where the memory of the dead is not a monument but a seat in parliament.

At the top of the list is the candidate for the post of Prime Minister, Gadi Eisenkot, who lost his son Gal and his nephew Maor in Gaza.

In tenth place on his list is Shira Shapira, mother of Aner—the hero of the Re’im shelter—who fended off the grenades thrown at them until the eighth one killed him.

A few minutes further along Road 232, Michal Hirsch Negri, of the Insieme party, lost her son Roi, who fell whilst defending Kibbutz Be’eri.

A short distance away is Alumim, where Ran Gvili fought his final battle; his body was the last to be brought back from Gaza and his mother, Tali Gvili, now sits in the Knesset as a member of Likud, the party of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Further north, in Kfar Aza, Nira Ronen was murdered; her grandson, Omri Ronen, now sits in Parliament with the Democrats.

Even further on, at the Nahal Oz outpost, the son of Rafi Ben Shitrit—the deputy leader of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party—was killed.

Sharon Sharabi, a member of Yisrael Beiteinu, has also suffered a terrible loss: her brother Yossi Sharabi died whilst held captive by Hamas.

Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of Religious Zionism, is the cousin of Amishar Ben David, who was killed in Gaza; his deputy, Moshe Feiglin, is the grandfather of Yair Levin, who also fell in the war against Hamas.

Limor Son Har-Melech, of the Otzma Yehudit party, saw her husband murdered before her very eyes in a terrorist attack two decades before all this began (she was pregnant at the time).

We should also include those who have suffered the loss of a brother: Benjamin Netanyahu, whose brother Yoni Netanyahu was killed whilst leading the rescue operation in Entebbe; and Elisaf Peretz of the ‘Yashar!’ movement, whose brothers Uriel and Eliraz Peretz were killed, respectively, in Lebanon in 1998 and along the border with Gaza in 2010.

Two others are waiting outside the Knesset, ready to step in should anyone ahead of them on the list step down: Nir Hajbi, whose son Yonatan Hajbi was murdered in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip; and, after him, Shai Fisher, whose grandmother and uncle were killed by Hezbollah fire in Kfar Yuval, on the other side of the country.

Add to this Zvika Mor, the father of a freed hostage, and a host of other figures who have made a heavy sacrifice for society, and the result is an unprecedented Knesset.

The thirteenth place on the Likud list is reserved for Almog Cohen, who on 7 October fought against Hamas terrorists in his hometown, Ofakim.

Noam Tibon, a former general and the sixth candidate on the B’Yachad list, also headed south that morning.

Together with his wife, he helped evacuate the wounded before travelling to Nahal Oz to rescue his son and his family.

Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats and also a reserve general, travelled south, where he rescued several survivors from the Supernova music festival.

Elisha Medan, who was seriously wounded during the early stages of the ground offensive in Beit Hanoun in November 2023 and ranked fifteenth on the Likud list, entered the Knesset yesterday without his legs.

No other democratic parliament in the world bears on its own body the cost of a permanent war against those who deny the very right of the state to exist.

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