His special forces reservist partner was killed in the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, two weeks before their scheduled gay “wedding”, AFP reports.

But even though same-sex marriages are not officially recognised in Israel, Omer Ohana has since won gay soldiers’ partners the same rights to a widow’s pension as married couples.

The two reservists had lived together for six years and were planning to get “married” later in October, before honeymooning in Costa Rica.

It would have been “more like one party with a ceremony”, Ohana told AFP in his apartment in central Israel. Instead the cotton flowers intended as decorations for the celebration were used in a funeral wreath for Golan.