JERUSALEM, Israel – This past week in Jerusalem, a ceremony to remember Israel’s fallen soldiers was marked by sirens, and all activity stopped for a national moment of reflection. In the last year alone, 170 soldiers were killed in attacks, affecting lives across the country. CBN News had the chance to speak with the widow of an Israel Defense Forces soldier. She was left to raise her three children alone after her husband was killed by a Hezbollah rocket.
Israel commemorates Memorial Day with a ceremonial flame lighting at the Western Wall.
For some families, though, the loss of a fallen soldier is felt every single day.
Gal Raviv-Galea, 37, is the mother of three. Her husband, Major Itay Galea, died in 2024 during a Hezbollah rocket attack.
She told CBN News, “Many times I get asked if this is, like, a hard day for me. And for me, personally, it’s not because I live this reality every day.”
She added, “I think it is important for others to remember, because, I mean, this is it’s not just our history. It’s our reality and our presence.”
Raviv-Galea’s reality is to know what it’s like to build a life together and have it shatter in an instant.
She said of Itay, “He loved being a father. He got to be a dad for two of our three kids.”
That all changed on October 7th, 2023. Called up as a reservist, Itay went north to fight Hezbollah.
“He was supposed to be back, because I had an ultrasound for the for the pregnancy,” Raviv-Galea recalled.
She was 34 weeks pregnant with their third child. Then, everything changed when soldiers arrived at her door.
She remembered, “You see three soldiers, three people in uniform, standing in front of you. Like, there is no other reason they could be there.”
In that one moment, Gal’s world collapsed.
“It’s the biggest shock of my life,” she said. “I was so much not expecting it. I didn’t understand, like, how it could be. And it’s the biggest heartbreak.”
Then she had to try to recover, for herself and her children.
“It was very hard,” she explained. “I think having kids kind of forces you to function. and not feel that they just lost their dad. I don’t want them to feel that everything else is also breaking down around them. But it was, it was very hard, because you break down every second that you’re not with the kids.”
Each day, they found a way forward. Today, Gal’s children are 8, 5, and just 20-months-old.
She is determined that their father will not be forgotten.
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“It’s interesting,” she noted, “Because at first it was very hard for me to look at pictures. I really could not. But actually, my kids asked as they looked at pictures, and I guess it was a therapy for me to slowly be able to look at pictures myself.”
Through her children, her family, and the IDF Widows and Orphans organization, Raviv-Galea found love and support.
She told us, “This is an amazing program, and it helped me so much. And the birth of Romi, my third child, was amazing because they have camps for kids, for orphans, again, something I couldn’t even listen to at the beginning. But, I know that it’s so important for my kids as part of understanding and feeling that they’re not – it’s not – something to be ashamed of.”
While grief sometimes fades away momentarily, the memory of Itay will always remain.
“I would want my kids to remember him or to know him as, like, this very kind, smart, intelligent person that loved being in action and doing things and just always with a smile on his face,” she stated.
A man with a smile who loved his family and his country.
She described him as “very Zionist.”
“He kept telling me, ‘This is the last time I’m going to do reserve duty,'” she recollected, “’I’m like, done with it. I’m old.’ But he kept, he kept coming. So, it was, like, in his blood.”
His life of service left a family forever changed.
She insisted, “I will never accept this happened,” then she thought and said, “I will. I will never be at peace with it, but I understand that this is my reality.”
