Mother of Slain Hostage Determined to Keep His Name Alive

Iris and Yotam Haim. (X Screenshot) (X Screenshot)

Since December 2023, Iris Haim has been giving lectures across the globe, which she sees as one of the ways to keep her son Yotam’s memory alive.

By Amelie Botbol, JNS

“Emotions will always be there, the sadness, the feeling that it could have been different, the loss. I can be very strong most of the time and not cry, but I am a human being,” Iris Haim, the mother of former Hamas captive Yotam Haim, told JNS on Sunday.

“I don’t want to give up these emotions. I want to feel Yotam and the pain,” she added.

On Oct. 7, 2023, 28-year-old Yotam, who lived alone in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, was supposed to perform as a drummer with his heavy metal band, Persephore, at the Pshychoward Metal Festival in Tel Aviv.

“My husband lived in Moshav Sde Nitzan. I lived in Kibbutz Or HaNer, a seven-minute ride from Yotam. We had planned to go see him perform in Tel Aviv that day,” said Haim.

“This was his main issue that morning. He was worried and angry that he would not make it to the festival, he couldn’t understand what was happening,” she added.

The show never happened, and Yotam was taken captive during Hamas’s massacre across the northwestern Negev.

Yotam Haim, one of three Israeli hostages mistakenly killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip on Dec. 15, 2023. Credit: Courtesy.

On Dec. 10, 2023, an IDF Golani Brigade unit encountered and killed the terrorists who were holding Yotam, Alon Shamriz and Samer Fouad Talalka.

Five days later, after escaping the building where they were being held, the three Israeli captives were misidentified as terrorists and accidentally killed by IDF troops.

Days after the tragedy, Iris, a 58-year-old former palliative care nurse, told the Israeli soldiers who had mistakenly shot her son that she did not blame them.

“Of all things, death is nobody’s fault, usually it’s something that had to be,” she told JNS.

“We are in a war where everybody is hurting in Israel, not only the families of the hostages but also the families of the soldiers. Many troops were killed trying to bring the captives home,” she continued.

“It’s very hard for us. Yotam is not here but we can’t change the reality. The way that I chose to deal with it is not by throwing the blame on other people but by finding strength inside myself,” she added.

Early on, Iris said she decided not to join the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, though she developed a few connections with other captives’ families that she maintains to this day.

“We have our own way of dealing, our own frequency, we don’t find it in other people. It’s very important for us not to blame, not to shout. We are not angry and we don’t want anger to come into our life, we have our own problems,” she said.

“I deal with things by myself, not with others. I did not want to be together with hundreds of people talking about our problem. We have our way to support each other in the family and with our entourage,” she added.

Since December 2023, Iris has been giving lectures across the globe, which she sees as one of the ways to keep her son’s memory alive.

“When Yotam was still a hostage, I spoke for 65 days. In my first interviews when he was still alive, I’d say that I believed in his power, I believed that Israel was doing everything it needed to do and that he would come back. It was a different voice,” she said.

At her son’s Shiva, supporters asked Iris to continue speaking.

“Israelis love to fight all the time. On Oct. 6, 2023, we were fighting [among ourselves] and nobody wants to go back to that. So, a lot of people are telling me that I am the person that needs to revive that unity, and one of the ways to do so is by pushing this way of thinking and changing people’s minds,” she said.

Iris founded Yotam’s Life, a charitable organization and a safe space for people who like her son struggled with mental health issues.

“Yotam suffered from depression, anorexia, anxiety, complex post-trauma and borderline personality disorder. We want to create something to help others. We have the power to do it,” she said.

On Jan. 2, which would have been Yotam’s 30th birthday, a music room was donated to the anthroposophic high school in Pardes Chana in Yotam’s honor.

When Iris received the news of her son’s death, she was told she could collect and preserve Yotam’s sperm for future use, which she did.

“He talked a lot about building a family and having children. I think we also wanted to do it to have something from him. We feel that Yotam is with us all the time but if we end up having a grandchild from him, it will be more of a physical connection,” she said.

Iris moved away from Israel’s south and currently lives in Jerusalem close to her other son and daughter.

“My husband lives in the south, he is a farmer, he wants to be there for work, his life is there. Right now, I am here. I live from one day to the next and I don’t think long term,” she said.

“I don’t think about going back. People ask me but I don’t have an answer. Right now, I don’t want to go back there, it’s too difficult to see Kfar Aza and what happened there on that day,” she added.