Before opening the door to her home on a quiet Jerusalem street, Noorit Felsenthal Berger warned: "Be careful, the dog is full of enthusiasm." Indeed, Joyal is a large animal bursting with energy. Unable to contain this exuberance, her owner nevertheless looked at her with gratitude. "It was her energy that saved our lives in 2024, when we were in the middle of a nightmare." Every day, during that dark year, she and her husband feared for two of their three sons mobilized in Gaza, in the ranks of the Israeli army. But then, joining other conscripts' mothers (military service has been extended from two years and eight months to three years since the start of the war) and reservists (there are 400,000 of them), the clinical psychologist decided to call for a halt to hostilities.

Stunned to see young Israelis losing their lives and health in confrontations "pursued for essentially political ends," these women joined forces, back in March 2024, in a protest group called "Parents of Combat Soldiers Shouting Out, 'Enough!" Since October 7, 2023, the date of the Hamas terrorist attack in the south of the country, more than 890 Israeli soldiers have died, 405 of them in the Palestinian enclave. Felsenthal Berger has not lost anyone, but said she has lived in terror. One of her sons, the youngest, was 20 and had just completed a year of civilian national service when he was called up to fight on the very first day of the conflict. Posted first to Jabaliya in the north of the enclave, then to Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south, he spent 14 months there, with no real rest for the first eight months. Her eldest son, on the other hand, was in Italy, from where he returned voluntarily to enlist as a reservist. He headed for Khan Yunis for four months.

In the beginning, Felsenthal Berger said, "We thought there was no alternative to war. We were content to send food and equipment." According to several families, the young soldiers lacked everything from body armor to socks. In March 2024, however, when army officials announced that they were going to invade Rafah, near the Egyptian border, things changed. As the war intensified, "we realized that our sons didn't belong there," said Anat Mogliner, whose 22-year-old son, a member of a commando unit, returned to civilian life in early January. Her daughter's partner, on the other hand, never came back. He died in Gaza in December 2023 at 29 years old.

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