Israeli soldiers. (AP /Tsafrir Abayov)

A soldier was killed on active duty, and now his parents are fighting to use his sperm so they can have a grandchild

  • Amit Ben Yigal, an IDF soldier, was killed in 2020 in an arrest raid on a Palestinian village. 
  • His parents retrieved his sperm, and are now fighting for a new law to allow them to have grandchildren. 
  • Yigal’s father told the Jerusalem Post that 182 women want to be surrogates. 

Parents of an Israeli soldier who died in combat are trying to use his retrieved semen to become grandparents.

Currently, Israeli law does not permit bereaved parents to use the sperm of their dead children, and the couple is lobbying to have this changed.

Israeli soldier Amit Ben Yi gal, aged 21, of the IDF was killed during a raid in the Palestinian West Bank village of Yabad in 2020. Shortly after his death, his father retrieved his sperm.

Ben Yigal, his father, told the Jerusalem Post his son “really wanted to be a father. He wrote about it. He spoke about it.”

He said that when his son was killed, he was “stopped from being a parent” but he does not want to be “stopped from being a grandparent,” he told the outlet.

Yigal said he has gathered the contact information of 182 women willing to be a surrogate mother, but that the state is stopping him and his wife from using his dead son’s sperm.

Read the article by Bethany Dawson in Business Insider Australia,