Two Years Later, Israeli Parents Confront the Costs of War
Dina Kraft — September 29, 2025
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
About a week ago a middle-aged Israeli woman named Miri Kanar with curly light-brown hair and a soft, gentle voice that befits her profession as a kindergarten teacher made the decision to drive from her village in central Israel to her son’s army base on the border with Gaza.
Her mission? To speak to her son, a tank driver, her middle son of three, and convince him not to go into Gaza as planned the following day. She was prepared to block his tank with her own body if that’s what it would take. A few days earlier four of his friends were killed when an explosive device was tossed into their tank. The oldest of the four killed was 21.
Kanar did not manage to convince her son or his commander, or even to see her son in person. So instead, writing through tears from the steps outside the base, she poured her heart out into a Facebook post. In words that would soon go viral, she wrote:
I knew I would not be able to forgive myself if I didn’t do something. Until now I've refrained from getting involved in matters of destiny and in general. I didn't want to weaken my son’s spirit and thought that a soldiers' duty is to obey orders. But today that version of me ended. I'm a Zionist, law-abiding, polite, an educated woman, a person of values, a mother. But I have now been pushed to the edge. That's where Benjamin Netanyahu brought me. If God forbid my son falls protecting the country my heart will break. But (I cannot accept that he would die) in a war like this, a war without a purpose.
That night she was invited, much to her surprise as an everywoman who had never before been on TV, to appear on a panel during a Channel 11 news program. There she described how broken she was almost two years after the Gaza War was sparked by Hamas’ October 7 attack.
That sense of transformation, of brokenness, of despair but still trying to act, still trying to take back some agency in the face of the war, the wound of October 7 still raw and open with hostages still in Gaza, 20 of them still believed to be alive, reflects what many Israelis are feeling, many of them, like Kanar, with loved ones in the army. They are not who they were before or what they were before. And that is before even coming to any possible future accounting for the price of the devastation wrought in Gaza by Israel.
“I represent many parents, families, grandfathers, grandmothers who wrote in response to my Facebook post that you are our voice, the voice of this terrible movie we are trapped in,” she told the journalists and commentators on Channel 11 and all those listening at home.
Hopes across the region are pinned to Monday’s White House meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister that it might lead to the breakthrough deal that might signal the beginning of the end of the suffering of both peoples. A key question will be the timeline. Even if a deal is reached, will the trust between the sides — and American pressure — be there to see it followed through?
Kanar described how she – like many other parents she knows since the war began, will go into her soldier son’s room after hearing about another war casualty, to take out a piece of his clothing and breathe in his scent before quickly putting it away again so that the sensory memory is preserved.
She also described how she decided she will no longer hang flags in her kindergarten classroom or at home in the future as she always has until now, much as she has always loved Israel and the people who live here. Because, she says, “I don’t recognize my country any more.”
Kanar was referring to what she sees as the abandonment of the hostages and the soldiers for Netanyahu’s political benefit. She did not mention the plight of the Gazan civilians. Like in most TV studio settings and conversations at Shabbat dinners or between friends, those images and references are largely absent.
Speaking to what is more front of mind for Jewish Israeli citizens, a male panelist told Kanar, “Try to be strong in front of him,” referring to her son. This is standard Israeli discourse – not to share your mixed feelings with your combat soldier sons because that could lead them to hesitate in the field and not be on guard, possibly endangering their lives or that of their comrades.
Kanar’s answer was direct. “But I have broken, and this is after holding on for a long time. I have tried to be positive.” But she says she refuses to feel guilty, saying that it is the country itself that has “brought me to this.” This war, she said, is not a war of defense.
The Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, published a new poll Monday that found 66 percent of Israelis say the time has come to end the war in Gaza. The poll also found that 65 percent think that the return of hostages should be prioritized over toppling Hamas.
Another key finding: 64 percent of Israelis think Netanyahu should take responsibility for Oct. 7 and resign.
Meanwhile, echoing both the polls and Kanar’s words, a newly formed coalition of Israeli parents of combat soldiers have launched a campaign against the war. In a statement, they said:
We will no longer allow our children to be sent to die in a political war that cynically exploits the values on which we raised our sons (Zionism, brotherhood, and concern for civilian safety) in order to preserve Netanyahu’s hold on power. We will fight for our children’s lives like nothing seen here before. This political war must end, and there is nothing parents will not do to save their children.
Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly the opinion editor of Haaretz English.
