Bereaved Mother Rebukes Smotrich Over Use of Fallen Soldier's Photo

In an open letter, Hazeel Barif, the mother of fallen soldier Yona Bezalel Barif, told Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that he used her son’s photo on social media without asking the family first. She said the post, published at 3:39 p.m. on the eve of Shavuot, upset the fragile balance she was trying to maintain during a holiday already marked by her son’s empty chair and their grief.

Barif said the image showed a private moment, Yona studying Gemara in a jeep between missions hunting terrorists. She stressed that the photo had originally been shared by the family only when he was fighting for his life before Yom Kippur 2024, after public appeals for prayer, including one by Miriam Peretz, who urged worshippers at her synagogue to pray for his recovery during the reading of the Book of Jonah.

The mother wrote that no one from Smotrich’s office had contacted the family to ask whether they could bear the publication or whether the timing might harm them. She said the use of the photo turned a moment of hope and vulnerability into renewed pain and added that her son’s memory is not a political tool or a Facebook background.

Barif also objected to Smotrich’s wording, saying his use of the term “regrettably” was too weak to describe the death of Yona and other fallen soldiers. She urged him to learn Yona’s story, along with the stories of 956 other heroes who left behind homes, families and studies to defend Israel, and to remember them with greater precision, humility and reverence. The letter ends with a plea that anyone who speaks about the fallen do so as if they were speaking about their own loved ones.