Son of Israeli war cabinet member killed in action in Gaza

The son of Israel’s former top military commander, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, was among at least two soldiers killed Thursday during fighting in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said.

Master Sgt. Gal Meir Eisenkot, 25, a reserve soldier in a commando unit, was killed in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, the army said. General Eisenkot, who served as Israeli army chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, is now a minister and a non-voting member of the emergency war cabinet directing the fighting.

The War Cabinet, formed on October 11, consists of three primary members: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Yoav Gallant, the Secretary of Defense; and Benny Gantz, another former chief of staff and centrist politician – and two members participating as observers in the meetings: Mr. Eisenkot and Ron Dermer, a close aide to Netanyahu who previously served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

Nearly 100 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the Palestinian enclave in the past two months, since Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7. More than 300 soldiers were killed that day, Israeli officials said, and several were taken south. Gaza as prisoners.

General Eisenkot was visiting a war room in southern Israel on Thursday when he was told his son had been seriously injured, Israeli news media reported. The Israeli army announced the death of his son on Thursday evening.

Mr. Netanyahu offered his condolences to the family on behalf of himself and his wife Sara, calling Sergeant Eisenkot “a brave warrior and a true hero.”

“We cry with you,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement. “We hug you.”

Mr Netanyahu and his wife also offered their condolences to the families of all the country’s fallen soldiers on Thursday evening, the first night of Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of lights.

The death of a soldier can affect many in Israel, where most 18-year-olds are drafted into military service and most families have or know soldiers serving in the reserves. It was not immediately clear whether Sergeant Eisenkot’s death could have consequences for the work of the war cabinet.

After 40 years in the military, General Eisenkot entered politics last year and joined Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party, which is now part of the National Unity alliance. The alliance found itself in political opposition after the November 2022 elections, which returned Netanyahu to power and led the most polarizing, far-right and religiously conservative coalition government in Israel’s history.

Public confidence in the government, which had pushed an unpopular and divisive judicial reform plan, plummeted as a result of the intelligence and policy failures in the run-up to the October 7 attack, and few of Netanyahu’s many ministers had the knowledge or experience to oversee a war.

Mr. Gantz and his alliance agreed to join the government during the war, on the condition that Mr. Netanyahu form a war cabinet that could make decisions in a smaller and more professional forum than the cumbersome and unwieldy security cabinet.

Tamir Hayman, former head of military intelligence, wrote on social media that General Eisenkot told him at the beginning of the conflict that he would “run the war as if his son were on the front lines and as if his daughter were a hostage in Gaza.”

Mr. Hayman said General Eisenkot then added, “in his direct and serious style: ‘My daughter is not a hostage, but my son is on the front line.’”