Two months into the war, Eisenkot suffered a catastrophe of his own. He was at a military headquarters, studying a satellite map showing the positions of Israeli battalions near some of the fiercest fighting in Gaza. Fifteen minutes later, a major general who had once served under his command approached him.

“Gadi, come to me,” the officer said. “Gal is critically injured. Go home”

Eisenkot had spent more than four decades in the Israeli military. He knew what those words meant. If his son were still alive, he would have been told to go to the hospital, not home. “I understood he was dead,” he tells me. 

Gal died in combat alongside his friend Eyal Berkowitz, a young man from a West Bank settlement. It was Berkowitz whose photograph Eisenkot had shown me in his office, standing beside Gal. 

Thousands attended Gal’s funeral, which was broadcast on national television. Across the country, Israelis watched one of their most decorated commanders mourn the loss of his own son. Eisenkot delivered a eulogy, his voice trembling. “I promise you that we will continue to be a united and happy family, so that your sacrifice and that of the other fallen will not be in vain and that we will be worthy of it,” he said. “I salute you, beloved son.”