At least 170 dead young men in Israel have had their sperm extracted and preserved in the wake of the October 7 massacre, new figures have revealed.
More and more Israelis are choosing to extract sperm from their dead relatives to continue their bloodlines.
The latest figures, from between October 7 2023 and this June, are around 15 times higher than in previous years.
Iris Haim, whose son Yotam was accidentally killed by IDF forces in Gaza in December 2023 after he was kidnapped by Hamas during its terror attack, told the Telegraph that military officials had asked her whether she wanted her son to go through the extraction procedure the same day she found out he was dead.
The officers who broke the news gave her around half an hour to prcess the information about his death, before one whispered in her ear: ‘Iris, do you want them to take sperm from Yotam?’
‘I was very surprised. I asked my husband, and we immediately said yes’, she told the newspaper.
Dr Jehoshua Dor, a medical specialist who deals with sperm extraction, said there is generally a 72-hour window for these procedures, though there is a higher rate of success with extractions made within 24 hours of death.
Iris Haim’s (pictured, right) son Yotam (pictured, left) was accidentally killed by IDF forces in Gaza in December 2023 after he was kidnapped by Hamas during its terror attack
Iris was asked whether she wanted Yotam to go through the extraction procedure the same day she found out he was dead
‘A biopsy is done on the testes, tissue is taken to the IVF lab – like we do when they are alive,’ he explained.
‘The question when they are dead is: how much damage has been done when you wait many hours? If the sperm is still alive, can we show the DNA is intact? Once it’s retrieved, we freeze the sperm and then we wait.’
The process of artificial insemination is then the same as in regular IVF treatment when both parents are alive.
Yotam’s sperm was taken within hours of his parents’ approval, allowing for 10 vials to be collected and frozen.
The family are now waiting for a final approval to be given by an Israeli court for it to be used with a friend of the family to produce a grandchild for the grieving parents.
‘We have a chance to have a continuation of Yotam. I know he really wanted children,’ said Iris.
‘When we got this idea that we can do it, it really gave me a lot of hope and light… and room to breathe. Because I said, it was not the end. I know that Yotam’s soul is with us always.
Smoke rises following an explosion in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025
Injured Palestinians are transported to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital for treatment following an Israeli attack on the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza City, Gaza on January 01, 2025
Smoke rises following an explosion in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, January 1, 2025
‘This will be something real that we can feel. I hope it will be really successful and we will have grandchildren.’
The Israeli military kept up the pressure on northern Gaza on Wednesday, striking in a suburb of Gaza City, medics said, and told residents in a central part of the enclave to evacuate from an area where militants were firing rockets.
Air strikes in Shejaia, a suburb of Gaza City, killed at least eight Palestinians, according to local emergency services.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not immediately clear who was killed in the attack.
In al-Buriej, in central Gaza, the Israeli military said it struck a militant operating in an area from which rockets had been fired into Israel the previous day. Its Arabic spokesman had ordered people to leave the area before the strike.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said two people had been killed in that strike and 15 more in an airstrike in Jabalia. There was no immediate confirmation from Gaza health officials.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and razed, fuelling speculation, which Israel denies, that it intends to keep the area as a buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.
Israel says its almost three-month-old campaign in northern Gaza is aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping. Its instructions to civilians to evacuate are meant to keep them out of harm’s way, the military says.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.
According to the Palestinian civil defence, more than 1,500 tents sheltering displaced people across Gaza were flooded by heavy rains over the past two days, leaving people exposed to the cold, their belongings damaged.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the tiny coastal strip is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk