Widows of IDF soldiers who have fallen in the Israel-Hamas war told a Knesset meeting of the Committee on the Status of Women Tuesday that the help they have received from the state is not enough.
“The stipend provided by the Defense Ministry is not enough for education, enrichment, and making a respectable living,” said Raz Tahan, whose husband Ran was killed in Gaza. Tahan’s sister left her job and moved in with her to help with her four children full time, but this help is not enough, said Tahan.
“There were important, respectable people who came to the shiva and told me ‘With all the grief in this, at least you can be calm because you are an IDF widow and your children are IDF orphans.’ They lied to me. It’s not true [that we are getting enough support], we are not managing,” said Tahan. “We need help,” she added.
One representative at the meeting said that her sister-in-law, an IDF widow, was fired soon after her husband was killed. She called for the state to mandate “grief leave,” which would allow women to take time from work to process the loss of their spouse without risking their job.
Limitations of current legislation
Riki Morad, deputy head of the Families Department at the Defense Ministry explained the limitations of current legislation designed to help IDF widows and what the ministry has been doing to attempt to handle this.
Morad explained that prior to the war, the department was helping IDF widows with very different characteristics and with fewer children. The department has increased stipends to widows based on the number of children they have and has increased a stipend for purchasing a car.
Histadrut women’s organization Naamat representative lawyer Meira Bsuk called for a law to prevent employers firing IDF widows in the year following the death of a husband.
The war has left 230 women widowed and 532 children orphaned, according to Shlomi Nachumson, CEO of the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization. Some 18 of these widows are pregnant, he added. The treasury is holding up budgets recommended by the Rubinstein Committee which examined the treatment of IDF orphans, said Nachumson.