Grieving Parents Ask: Should They Freeze Their Dead Son’s Sperm?

Avi Harush heard a knock on his door in early April and saw Israeli military officers outside. Instantly he knew that his son, Reef, a 20-year-old soldier who had been sent to Gaza, was dead. The officers gave him the news, and then asked an unexpected question: Did the family want doctors to extract and freeze his son’s sperm? Mr. Harush was gutted with grief, but comforted by the notion of preserving a living memory of his child. He quickly agreed.

“It was something to hold on to, knowing that we would be able to have Reef’s child,” Mr. Harush said.

It has been more than a year since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. The deaths can be counted — 43,000 Palestinians, 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7 last year and some 400 soldiers since — but each individual loss creates an immeasurable hole, leaving families bereft and communities shattered. Children become orphans, women become widows and parents are left childless.

In Israel, however, the government and military have instituted a new protocol since the war began that offers a kind of hope for bereaved families. The Israeli military, when notifying the family of a soldier’s death, now immediately offers the option to have doctors retrieve and preserve the sperm of the deceased, a technology that was not used frequently before the war.

It’s a measure inconceivable to grieving people in Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign has nearly destroyed Gaza’s health system, with hospitals “minimally functional” and doctors performing surgery without anesthesia.

The possibility of descendants from dead soldiers — a new generation conceived from wartime loss — has incited ethically heated and legally tangled debates.