Most of the best-known hostage relatives in Israel are those who have led demonstrations and called to topple the government, such as Einav Zangauker, who called last week for IDF reservists not to report for duty. 

But Iris Haim became renowned in Israel for taking a radically different approach. 

Haim’s son, Yotam, was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. He and fellow hostages Samar Talalka and Alon Shimriz managed to escape captivity, only to be mistakenly killed by the IDF on Dec. 15, 2023.

Yet days after Yotam was killed, rather than express anger or even anguish, Haim chose to send a message of forgiveness and encouragement to the troops.

In a statement Haim recorded while still sitting shiva for Yotam, sent to the battalion in which the soldier who killed her son served, she said: “I am Yotam’s mother. I wanted to tell you that I love you very much, and I embrace you here from afar. I know that everything that happened is absolutely not your fault, and nobody’s fault except that of Hamas, may their name be wiped out and their memory erased from the earth. I want you to take care of yourselves and to think all the time that you are doing the best thing in the world. Don’t hesitate for a second if you spot a terrorist. Don’t think that you intentionally killed a hostage. You must defend yourselves, because that is the only way you can defend us. Nobody is going to judge you or be angry. Not me, and not my husband Raviv. Not my daughter Noya. And not Yotam, may his memory be blessed. And not Tuval, Yotam’s brother. We love you very much. And that is all.”

Since then, Haim has been lauded by many Israelis. She was granted the honor of lighting a torch at Israel’s official Independence Day ceremony last year, and she continues to be a sought-after speaker in Israel. 

Jewish Insider interviewed Haim at the Global Network for Jewish Women Entrepreneurs and Leaders’ 2025 Global Leadership Conference, which aimed to inspire Jewish women from around the world to take initiative to support Israel and the Jewish people. The conference was held online last Sunday. 

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jewish Insider: Tell us about your life, and who you were before October 7th

Iris Haim: I was a palliative care nurse for almost 20 years, taking care of people that are going to die…

I lived in Kibbutz Gvulot, and then we left the kibbutz, and we lived in a Moshav [Sde Nitzan], in the Gaza envelope. I loved the place, I was safe there. I felt that that is my home.

I’m a very Zionist person. I was born in Israel in 1966, in Haifa, to a very secular family, ultra ultra secular, very left-wing. I’m married, and have three children… I have been a very optimistic person since I was born, with a lot of hope. People always say that I bring a lot of light … especially to these places that are so dark, when people are near death and the situation is very, very complicated.

JI: Tell us about Yotam. What was he like? What did he like to do? What were his hopes and dreams?

IH: Yotam is my second child, born in 1995. He just turned 30. For me, he’s still here, and we are celebrating his birthday. Yotam had a lot of issues in his life. He was very complicated … He had Hirschsprung’s disease, which affects the intestines, and he had to have an [abdominal] operation when he was a year old … He was hospitalized a lot … For a child, for a baby, it’s a traumatic beginning, and it continued after the surgery for 10 more years, with a lot of side effects.

Yotam became a special character. He was very, very talented. He was a heavy metal drummer. He had a band. He was a very good athlete, training in Crossfit and basketball. He had red hair and a sense of humor, very sarcastic humor sometimes. On the other hand, he dealt with depression and anxiety when he was very young. When he was 18, approaching the army [enlistment age], he developed an eating disorder … He couldn’t be a soldier…

His dream was to be a famous drummer … He also wanted to be a father and to have children. We have three children, and he was the only one who talked about wanting a child of his own. 

JI: What did you experience on Oct. 7?

IH: Yotam lived in Kibbutz Kfar Aza … He was there in his little apartment in the young generation neighborhood, very, very close to the fence of the kibbutz. In the early hours he was joking with us [over text messages]. We didn’t understand what was happening. We lived [in the western Negev, near Gaza] our whole lives and we felt very secure. We never thought something like this could happen to us. I was seven minutes away from Yotam.

We didn’t understand what was happening until 10 a.m … and at 10:44, Yotam disappeared after he sent us some messages that everything is on fire, then the terrorists are in the kibbutz, and then inside his house, burning the place. He wrote he was afraid that he won’t survive and he loves us. And that’s it. Then he disappeared.

From Oct. 7 [2023] at 10:44 a.m., we tried to understand what happened in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. There were something like 300 terrorists. They came in two waves. One was in the morning, and they didn’t reach the young people’s neighborhood. At 10, there was another wave that went to their neighborhood.

JI: At what point did you understand that he had been taken hostage?

IH: He said everything was on fire, and we didn’t know what was going on. He said he was afraid they were going to kill him, and he thought of jumping out the window, but we didn’t know what happened. Then he disappeared, and after two and a half weeks, we received information that he was kidnapped and alive.

JI: In those early weeks, the families of hostages or missing people started to respond to these events in different ways. What was your response, both emotionally and publicly?

IH: In the beginning, when everybody started to look for their families on Telegram [messaging app] and Instagram, and to hear the news, we did the opposite. We closed all the information and we decided that we only wanted to hear facts, not rumors. We waited for the army. The army came after a week and told us that they don’t know anything, but if they will know, they will tell us. 

We didn’t go to demonstrate. I didn’t believe in that way. I believe that Israel is doing everything that they can. But we went outside of Israel. We spoke in England and Australia. And of course we talked everywhere in Israel, on the television and the radio.

But mostly what I did was a more spiritual thing. I believed. Yotam had a lot of strength, because for 28 years he experienced so many downs in his life and very, very difficult times, with depression and anorexia, and he managed to come out of it all by himself. So for me, I knew it was a matter of time. My knowledge was that Yotam would survive. I didn’t have any doubt about that.

When I believed, first of all, I connected to my inner voice … I’m not religious, but I had the guidance … I don’t know who it is, but he guided me. I heard these voices. ‘Don’t worry. Yotam is okay. He’s fine. He will do it. He’s strong.’ … And I can send to Yotam this energy, this power.

In a way, I didn’t want to go to demonstrate, because I felt that demonstrations were weakening that frequency, and I wanted to strengthen it. So we prayed a lot … It’s different from most. I think most of the people went crazy. They went to the streets with their signs and shouting and blaming, and I’m not. That’s OK – everyone’s way is good. But for me it was not good. I didn’t believe in that way …This was my whole family. Nobody wanted to go demonstrate or to shout … Of course we went to the meetings with the government ministers.

JI: Did people try to persuade you to join what the majority of the families had been doing? Were you in contact with families that didn’t understand what you were doing? 

IH: We didn’t have contact with [the Hostages and Missing Families Forum headquarters]. They tried to convince me to say something that I didn’t want once, and it was finished there. We didn’t have any more contact with them. They knew that I did not agree with their way. 

JI: After Yotam escaped Hamas captivity and was tragically killed by friendly fire, you sent a unique message to the soldiers just days after your son was killed … How did you have the strength, after experiencing such a tragedy, to deliver such a positive and encouraging message?

IH: During the shiva, we had thousands of people coming every day, and one of them told me that she is the wife of one of the officers in this battalion. She said that the army cannot fight. People are busy being angry at each other. ‘Why did you shoot him? Why did you do it?’ They were in such a mess, and the morale was so low and the motivation was not there. 

I live here. As I said, I’m very Zionist and patriotic. I’m an Israeli forever. I will never leave this country. So at that point I felt, first of all as a citizen, that I’m worried about these soldiers. If something would happen to them, then it would immediately influence the war, and … we need them strong.

The second thing is that I’m a mother, and as a mother, I felt like the soldiers’ mother during all 70 days that Yotam was in captivity. I always say, this war is not the families of the hostages’ war. This is the Israeli war. It’s all, all the people’s war. And these soldiers came to save people, they didn’t come to kill … So how can I be angry? They are like my children. 

And I knew that Yotam will not come back if I will be angry. So It was very, very simple for me. I wanted to tell them to continue.

JI: Since then you’ve become a symbol of resilience for Israelis and the Jewish people. What is the message that you seek to relay when you speak to these audiences these days?

IH: First of all, I talk about choices. I can choose in every minute of my life, every minute. The only thing I cannot choose is whether to breathe, because this is automatic … but most of the things that I’m saying, that I’m thinking are a choice.

From the minute that Yotam was kidnapped, I chose every minute how to see my son, how to imagine him. It was in my control. The only control I had is how I talked about it and how I looked at it. I was lucky enough to have enough strength to listen to my own voice and not to be afraid of what people said. I didn’t hear any of it.

You can choose to be angry, or you can choose to be compassionate. And when Yotam was killed, I needed to choose again if I will be angry. Then there would be more miserable people in the world — these soldiers, us … Is this the right thing to do for my healing or not? Since then, it’s been more than a year and four months. I’m not angry. I choose not to blame anybody. I am dealing with things.

I’m not avoiding life, but I’m choosing how to deal with it … I don’t blame anybody, because I don’t believe in that way … I have my philosophy of life. Life can be good for me. It all depends on me. I can find so much good, and I need to choose to see it. It depends on where we put our focus.

There is also a lot of bad. Yesterday we heard about two more soldiers who were killed … I cannot control this. What I cannot control, I’m not dealing with. I can’t change what [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi [Netanyahu] thinks or what this government is doing. I can only vote differently next time, and that’s the way to keep myself normal and not go crazy.

Another thing I believe with all my heart is that — it’s not just belief, it’s knowledge — that Yotam is here, and because of that, I can continue. I am in touch with him, in a new relationship with Yotam. His spirit is here, but his body is not. I get a lot of messages from him all the time. If you told me this before Oct. 7, I would tell you that this is crazy. But now I know it’s normal.

Two weeks after Yotam was killed, I already told this story to 300 people in Jerusalem. Since then, people told me I must continue because I have a different way of looking at life. I’m not doing palliative care now, because I cannot do it now, but I think I am influencing a lot of people to think differently and believe differently.