Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, in a meeting with widows and orphans of fallen Israeli soldiers ahead of Yom Hazikaron, “Your fathers are the ones who ensure the eternity of Israel.”

“How do you live with the grief? It’s very difficult, and I can tell you that we all feel it. I lost my older brother, and it was as if someone took an ax and cut off my arm and my leg,” the Prime Minister’s Office quoted Netanyahu as telling members of the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization.

Netanyahu’s brother Lt. Col. Yoni Netanyahu was killed during “Operation Thunderbolt” to rescue 102 hostages at Entebbe, Uganda, on July 4, 1976.

“Then someone came to me during the mourning period, and he told me that he had also lost a brother—he was a bereaved brother. He said to me: ‘I know you won’t believe me, but the suffering you feel now will not remain at this intensity, with the same anguish you feel now, and there is life after this,’” the prime minister continued.

“But the most important thing I can tell you is: It is not in vain. It is not in vain, because without them, we would not exist. We are here thanks to the heroes, our chain of heroes,” Netanyahu said.

The State of Israel will commemorate its fallen beginning on the evening of April 20.

According to figures released by the Defense Ministry before the weekend, 170 Israeli soldiers have been killed during their military service since last Yom Hazikaron.

On Saturday, the military announced the death of Warrant Officer (res.) Barak Kalfon, from Adi in northern Israel, during an operation the previous day in Southern Lebanon.

The following day, the IDF said that Sgt. First Class (res.) Lidor Porat, 31, from Ashdod, killed in Lebanon on April 18.

The updated data brings the total number of those who have lost their lives in defense of the nation since 1860—when Jewish residents began establishing neighborhoods outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls—to 25,646.

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