Sara Netanyahu (left) is honored at Tuesday's Jewish Federation event. Photo: Avi Ohayon/GPO.

JNS.org – Sara Netanyahu, wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was honored by Jewish federation leaders on Tuesday in New York for her work with wounded soldiers and bereaved families during Operation Protective Edge.

The prime minister’s wife was active in reaching out to the families who paid the heaviest price of the fighting in the Gaza war. In July, she visited the Shaul family—which made the difficult decision to mourn their son Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, who was declared dead after an attack on an armored personnel carrier in Shujaiyya, but whose body was never recovered. She also visited Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, where two nurses had sons who were wounded in Gaza.

The Netanyahus also kept in close contact with the families of the three Jewish teens who were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in June.

“I sat behind you at the funeral of the three boys,” Malcom Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told Sara Netanyahu on Tuesday. “I had just landed and came directly to the cemetery. I saw how you spoke to those three mothers. I was crying before, I cried a lot more afterwards. The comfort you gave them, the way you related to them… it said more than all the tributes and all the things I could say.”