After almost a month of uncertainty, oscillating between hope and despair, on Friday Anat and Lior Gelles received the devastating news of the death of their 20-year-old daughter, Yam, an observer at the base of Nahal Oz, who fell on Black Saturday.
Alongside their two sons, Peleg and Rif, they sit at home in Modi'in, still not digesting that their daughter is gone. That hope has faded. That their beautiful, talented and smart girl, who loved her meaningful service, the job, the responsibility and the knowledge that she was responsible for the safety of the residents of the envelope, who was supposed to be released in five months and planned to fly on a trip to Japan - is gone.
"She had a whole life ahead of her." Yam's parents, Anat and Lior, Photo: Jonathan Shaul
"On Saturday morning, Lior woke me up and said there was a missile attack," Anat recounted the events of that Black Saturday yesterday. "We were always worried when there were missile attacks, because we knew there was sea in Nahal Oz. Although it was something out of the ordinary, we didn't think anything could happen to the sea. At 9:41 a.m., we received a strange message from the phone of someone serving with her. It said, 'Mom, it's a sea. I'm okay now.' From that moment on, we tried to understand where the sea was and what happened. It went on for many hours, we thought she was okay because she was in the war room and it was more protected than the residences."
They tried to reach her by phone, and when she didn't answer, they went to hospital to look for her, without success. Only on Thursday did an army representative come to them and say that Yam was missing and that there was no information about her.
Voices Absent from the Eyes of Families - Observer
Anat and Lior spoke with other soldiers, watched horror videos from the Nahal Oz base, and managed to put together a picture according to which Yam was in the war room when the attack began. Nine other observers remained with her. "We realized that the war room had burned down," says Lior. "Three soldiers I spoke to told me there was no way she got out of there on time."
Every day another family received the bitter news that their observer daughter had been murdered. "We understood where it was going. Every day we sat and waited for them to come knock on us," says Lior. Yam is the ninth of ten female soldiers in the war room who were pronounced dead.
Bodies in the Shura camp in Ramle, where the process of identifying bodies is being established, photo: Jonathan Shaul
The battle at the Sufa outpost, October 7, 2023, photo: IDF Spokesperson
The parents say that Yam told them a little about the tense situation at the border, and about some unusual incidents reported by the spotters, but she was not afraid. "She knew that if she jumped forces, they would come. But they didn't come. They were there for hours and they didn't come," says Anat. "Yam believed strongly in the importance of what she was doing. She was very proud when they placed her in Nahal Oz. She didn't know she was in danger.
"I feel like my daughter wasn't protected. who abandoned her. The army abandoned her. The sea had a whole life and lots of things to do. I want her voice to be heard."
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