Losing My Other Half

"When the coffin was taken down, I felt that a part of me was coming down with it":

How does one continue - when half of your soul is gone? Three bereaved twins describe the difficulty of losing their other halves during the war with Hamas.

Since the beginning of the war, the phrase "cleared for publication" became, under terrible circumstances, a common word in the Israeli language. The new reality that those who’ve lost their loved ones are forced to face is unimaginable - especially when it comes to losing a twin. We sat down with 3 grieving twins who told us how it feels when the person closest to you, who looks exactly like you - no longer moves on with you. 

Amir Achims (20) - Twin brother of Tomer Achims z”l

In the garden of the Achims family house in Lahabim, there is a checker board on the table. On the surface it looks normal, but once you open it, there is a drawn picture of Tomer alongside an inscription.

Since they were little, Tomer and Amir used to play checkers with each other, and now, that beloved game has taken on a completely different meaning. However, this was just one of their many shared interests and hobbies.

"We went to the same school, we had the same group of friends, we went scouting together, we played tennis, soccer and boxed together. We even shared a wardrobe" Amir says. "From the moment I was born, I never knew what it was like to be alone. Everyone knew us as the Achims twins."

Amir says it is difficult for him to explain that, as much as they were similar, they were also different. "Beyond our speech, which was slightly different, we had a different attitude towards things. For example, he smiled, “nothing would stress Tomer out, he was stubborn and always knew what was good for him. I wasn't like that, I was the more moderate one."

The moment they were drafted into the army was the first time they went different ways. They were drafted two weeks apart. "Suddenly, I was my own person. Suddenly everyone knew me only as Amir, an individual, not knowing that I have a twin brother."

Tomer started a course in the Nahal Brigade, but following an injury in advanced training, he became a soldier of the Southern Division and worked with the late Brigadier General, Col. Assaf Hammi z”l. 

On October 7, the Brigadier General and Tomer, and also their driver, Kirill Brodsky z”l, were staying on base for the weekend. At half past six in the morning, when it all started, the three of them immediately jumped into the car. Hammi was the first to really grasp the gravity of the situation and said on the radio, “this is the commander speaking, I declare we are in a state of war."

They rushed to Kibbutz Nirim and, when they arrived, they immediately had their first encounter with Hamas terrorists. After a short battle, they continued to the Kibbutz's soccer field following reports that more terrorists were there. They fought, only three soldiers against dozens of terrorists, and Hammi was wounded. During the exchange of fire, Tomer and Kirill carried him to the shelter to apply a tourniquet. It seems that this is where they were injured because that was the last time they were in contact with anyone. All three fell, but their efforts saved the kibbutz.

"At the time I was home, I woke up suddenly because of a bad feeling in my stomach," shares Amir, "I don't usually believe in these types of things, but I simply felt that something was happening." It wasn't long before Amir too was called in with his unit to fight in Kibbutz Be’eri. When he returned on Sunday evening, his commander informed him that his family was looking for him on the phone.

"My parents call and tell me that casualty officers have arrived and announced, ‘Tomer has been kidnapped, and it is unknown what his condition is,'” he recalls. "I returned home, and from there, 53 days of hell began. We knew nothing, and during all this time, terrible thoughts passed through my head. Since then, I have not returned to combat. The chance that I would also be killed was too high - it would break up my family.”

Every week, intelligence officers visited the Achim family to share with them more details regarding the tragic battle. "I tried to not lose hope. On the one hand, the head understands, but the heart wants to believe and hold on to the small chance that, maybe, he’d only been shot on the arm."

A month and a half later, Amir's father called him to the living room of their home. "I understood right away. Something in the tone of his voice," he recalls. "I went down the stairs, and saw him and my older brother crying. They didn't say anything to me, and I started crying with them."

"Losing a twin is losing your other half", states Amir. "We were a pair, and now I have to learn to function again. I don't know what it's like to live alone, it's a process I'm learning and it's not easy."

Tomer and Amir were almost completely identical, which was extremely hard for his grieving family. "For a long time, my mother would start crying when I would talk to her. She couldn't even look at me, because she saw him in me," he testifies, "many people who look at me see Tomer. That's why, at first, I tried very hard to be like him, to emulate his strong character, so that if I smile - everyone would too."

Half a year sounds like a long time, but it was not enough to overcome such a loss. "I'm a very rational person, and understand that he won't come and knock on my door. But sometimes it happens to me that I want to send him a video on Instagram, and then I remember," he says, forcing himself to finish the sentence, "there's also a part of me that doesn't want to continue. Something about moving forward means forgetting."

"When they ask me how many brothers I have, I still say that I have a twin brother. He has been around for 20 years, and always will be."

Itamar Wiesel (35) - Twin Brother of Elkanah Wiesel z”l

Among the countless photos of Elkanah and Itamar, it is easy to recognize that they have an unusual hobby in common: juggling. "When we were in third grade, we received 3 balls as a gift. We started playing with them, and little by little it became more of a hobby," Itamar laughs, "it became our thing and we became famous for it. We started doing it professionally, we performed at all our friends’ Bar Mitzvahs."

"We had a very close relationship, but we were not stuck to each other," says Itamar, "we had many things in common and were very similar, but each of us also had his own life and character. For example, I am much more extroverted and talkative, and Elkanah was introverted, calm, and academically oriented. Juggling created a common language between us, and we didn't have to talk to feel close."

During his obligatory service, Elkanah was a fighter in the Nachshon Regiment. He was wounded in combat during the operation “Protective Edge.” On October 7, although he was not drafted into reserves, it was clear to him that he was going to fight. "I remember he called hundreds of people and insisted on coming back. Two weeks after that, he was recruited into the 261st Brigade’s reserve battalion."

During all of Elkanah's activity in the war, Itamar says that he wasn't too worried about him. "I knew they weren't going into Gaza, but they were doing missions in the surrounding area and on the fence. When Elkana was killed, it was only the second time they had entered Gaza."

On January 22, the combatants in the battalion, as mentioned, entered Gaza for the second time, to the al-Ma'azi Camp. There, the mission was to neutralize infrastructure. It was a large-scale operation, with combat engineering forces and tanks, Elkanah's battalion was tasked with securing the surrounding area.

Once they had finished their work and were packing up the equipment, a squad of terrorists emerged and fired an RPG missile at one of their posts. The missile activated the explosives that were connected and ready for action, the two buildings around them collapsed, and 19 soldiers were killed - among them Elkanah.

"At the time, I was home, and around noon I had an intense feeling of anxiety. Something unexplainable. I layed in bed all day and did nothing. I don't know what happened to me," he admits, "in the evening I had a family event on my wife's side. Because of my abnormal feeling of anxiety, I was only able to get out of bed a few minutes before we left."

In the middle of the event, Galit, Elkanah's wife - the only one who knew that he had entered Gaza - sent Itamar a text message saying that Elkanah, who was supposed to come home, hadn’t. "In my mind, I didn’t worry at all or assume that anything had happened," he recalls, "just when my family and I were planning to return home, my younger brother wrote saying that he needed to tell me something, to not go home; he was on his way to me."

Itamar and his family did not go out, they waited in their car: "I didn't suspect anything, and suddenly there was a knock on the car window. It was my brother, standing next to an officer from the casualties department. He called me out, hugged me and told me that Elkanah was killed in Gaza."

"I was shocked, and it caught me off guard. I didn't even cry. So I just started asking the officer questions - who are you, what's your name, where do you live," he recalls, "and in response, he suddenly started crying, and I don't know why exactly, but when his tears flowed, so did mine."

Elkanah's death caught Itamar in a complex time. "I lived in Sderot, and following the war we were relocated to a community near Beit Shean. Coming to a loss at a time like this is not easy," he shares, "everyone says that when you lose a loved one, it's like losing a limb, but losing a twin is losing a part of your soul, it burns. Suddenly, I really feel that a part of me is not with me."

"All my life, people would ask me what it was like to be a twin, and I always answered the same thing: 'I don't know, because I've never been a non-twin,'" he laughs, "besides that, we were also very similar. In recent years I gained weight, and our resemblance faded. Right when he was killed and I began to lose weight, people suddenly started telling me how much I resembled him. Some didn't even know that Elkanah had a twin, and when they met me they thought it was creepy!"

Yet, the resemblance between the two became a great comfort for Itamar. "I have the privilege of people seeing me, and them being able to see Elkanah through me. People hugged me and told me they felt like they were hugging him, and that makes me happy."

Yotam Golan (22) - The Twin Brother of Yonatan (Yoni) Golan z”l

"When we were little, the only difference between us was the color of our clothes," Yotam describes. "I always dressed in warm colors and Yoni in cooler ones. It matched our personalities very well. I was hot-headed and anxious, and Yoni was calm and easy-going. We are twin brothers, the most ‘twins’ it can get," he said. "As a child you might not like it, but then when you grow up, there's a moment when something changes. You realize it's the best thing that's ever happened to you. For us, it was when we stopped sharing a room. Everything we wanted to separate, we suddenly wanted to reunite."

The first time that Yoni and Yotam split up was when each of them drafted and began basic training: "Until then, the longest period of time we weren't together was a week. Then, because of COVID, we found ourselves not seeing each other for five months." Basic training was a turning point for the twins, as each chose the direction they would go in the army.

"Yoni had the profile to become a pilot, but he decided to enlist in the Armored Corps" boasts Yotam. "He claimed that in places like these, there aren't always people who want to enlist. That's why, he said, 'I'll be good, wherever I need to be good,’ and believed it wholeheartedly."

On October 7, Yoni was positioned at the Nahal Oz outpost when he woke up to the sound of sirens. His commanding officer called him saying: "we are going in, run to the tanks." Yoni and his tank crew left the outpost and encountered 3 terrorist vans. After half an hour of fighting, they eliminated the terrorists.

They then advanced, moving around the entire area between Nahal Oz and Re'im and continued to fight against the terrorists they encountered along the way. At the same time, there were calls for help from Nahal Oz, and when Yoni's tank was notified, they raced back to help. As they scanned the base upon arrival, anti-tank missiles started hitting their tank from the back.

The team members evacuated the tank and ran towards a shelter. Yoni covered them and returned fire, and they soon noticed that not everyone had gotten out of the tank. That is when Yoni decided to return to the tank, and, while helping his friend who was left behind, he took out the body of another friend from inside the tank, the body of Or Avital z”l. Yoni carried him on his shoulders, and when he left the tank, a bullet was fired to the back of his head, killing him.

Meanwhile, Yotam was with his battalion on a mission in Hebron. "Among all the messages we received that morning, there were reports that the Nahal Oz outpost had fallen and that there were people killed," Yotam recalls. "At 09:11, I suddenly felt dizzy and my vision went dark, so I sat down. It took us two days to realize that he was killed, but at this moment I understood straight away, in a kind of twin instinct, in a crazy way, that that was the exact time he was killed."

Yotam returned home on Sunday evening, when Yoni's condition was still unknown. A day later, he returned from the funeral of a good friend of Yoni's and saw that the casualty officers were at his house: "I dropped to the floor and fell apart. It was the worst feeling I've ever had in my life, and I don't think I'll ever feel anything close to it. At that time the first rain of the year started, it was really surreal."

"At the beginning of the funeral, I didn't realize that I was burying my twin," he breaks down, "only when I went up to deliver the eulogy, and finished with the sentence 'who am I without you?,' I began to feel suffocated. They took the coffin down, and I felt that half of me was going down with it."

"To lose a twin is to lose yourself," Yotam emphasizes, "every decision I made, every breath I took, and every thought I thought, were with him. At no point did I exist without him. Because of the similarity between us, I couldn't look in the mirror for a while. People also insisted on seeing me, or asked me to hug them, to remember his hug."

"I don't eat like I used to, exercise, sleep or even behave in a similar routine," he shares, "Fridays and Saturdays are the hardest, because on the weekend, when he was at home, he would play his guitar loudly, and you can't avoid Yoni when he's with his guitar. On the weekend after he was killed, suddenly, it was quiet."

When asked what he misses the most, Yotam answers in a low voice holding tears in his eyes: "life is like a circle that expands, and when Yoni was killed, I had a hole in the circle. Although the circle continues, the hole will always remain. You learn to grow around it, and the pain changes shape. At first it hurt a lot and I was angry, now I have more hope and I just miss him a lot.”