The first thought that came to Dr. Hadas Levy when she found out that her fiancé, Capt. (res.) Netanel Silberg, 33, was killed in Gaza on December 18, 2023, was that the news couldn’t be true.

Her next thought was: “I want to have his baby.”

On June 11, 2025, Levy, 35, became the first woman to give birth to a baby whose father had been killed in the war against Hamas through posthumous sperm removal (PSR).

“Until the baby was born, I was still grieving for Netanel,” Levy told The Times of Israel. “And now I can wake up in the morning and feel joy.”

In the days following October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, slaughtering some 1,200 people, and kidnapping 251 to Gaza, embryologists and specialists reported an unprecedented number of requests for postmortem sperm retrieval.

Since then, according to the Health Ministry, postmortem sperm retrieval has been performed on 250 soldiers and security forces personnel, with 193 at the request of a parent. Sperm was also retrieved from 21 civilians, again with 10 of those requests from parents.

An IDF spokesperson told The Times of Israel that when casualty notification officers inform families about a fallen soldier, they also talk to them about the legal possibility of retrieving sperm from the deceased in cases where it is medically feasible to do so.

The officers approach the family as quickly as possible, in a way that does not jeopardize the chances of a successful retrieval, the spokesperson said.

Before October 7, posthumous sperm retrieval was permitted for the parents only with court approval. After the start of the war, the Health Ministry and the Justice Ministry approved a temporary regulation allowing parents to authorize sperm retrieval without the need for court approval. But there is no national policy about what happens next to the sperm.

Because Levy was not yet married to Silberg, she had to petition the family court in Jerusalem in 2024 to use his sperm. At the same time, she asked to be recognized as Silberg’s common-law partner. The court granted both requests. She then continued with in vitro fertilization.

In July, an Eilat court authorized Sharon Eisenkot to use sperm retrieved from her son, IDF soldier Maor Eisenkot, who was killed in Gaza in 2023, to have a grandchild through surrogacy, in the first such decision since the outbreak of the war.

On its website, the Health Ministry states that the issue raises “many complicated questions from various........

© The Times of Israel