Israel grieves for fallen soldiers
Normally, Israelis flock to Moshav Nir Etzion to leave their worries behind and enjoy an ocean-view vacation. But on Tuesday, it became a site of national mourning.
In the picture-postcard village which lies on the Carmel Mountains some 200 metres above sea level, people wept and wailed for Oded Ben-Sira, a 20-year-old soldier who was killed by sniper fire.
Shortly before officiating at the funeral, the village rabbi Ronen Lubich told <I>The AJN<P> of the heart-stopping moment when the news of his death came through. “There was lots of crying – he was born here and everyone has known him since he was a baby,” he said, adding that locals were mourning him as “an emissary of all of us” against terror.
The loss reverberated around this small tight-knit community and around the family, which has experience of tragedy – Ben-Sira’s great aunt and uncle were killed in a 1948 massacre. His sister Moriyah felt this week’s loss especially hard – they were twins.
The last few days has seen an almost non-stop string of funerals. The mourning has reached every sector of Jewish society in Israel – and given that one of the two civilians killed was Bedouin, has also touched the Arab sector.
Fallen soldiers came from across the country – from the Negev Desert in the south to the Galilee in the north. They ranged from young conscripts to long-serving reservists – the pictures of the dead include Daniel Pomerantz, 20, with a girl pressed up against him in a flirty pose, and the sober-looking Amotz Greenberg, 45, a lawyer who voluntarily reported for reserve duty even though he could have stopped serving age 40.
They were Sephardi and Ashkenazi, white and black, religious and secular. Most were Israeli born; some were immigrants. Three of them were “lone soldiers” – Diaspora Jews who had made aliyah without their parents.
To make up for these soldiers’ lack of family to mourn them, Israelis turned out in their thousands, calling themselves surrogate family members. After sports stars decided to honour his memory, some 20,000 people, attended the funeral of 21-year-old American-Israeli Sean Carmeli at 11pm on Monday. The team of Maccabi Haifa FC posted his picture urging fans to attend the funeral, so that even though he was a “lone soldier” with most of his family is in his native America, it would be well attended.
Another lone soldier was Max Steinberg, 24, who was also an American immigrant. Josh Flaster, who helps to run a support group for lone soldiers, told <I>The AJN<P> that Steinberg was a brave man who “did anything he could to defend his friends and others.” Flaster described him as a “very sweet guy, not a big guy physically, who had a very big heart.”
The Israeli military fatalities in full are: Eitan Barak, 20; Amotz Greenberg, 45; Adar Barsano, 20; Bar Rahav, 21; Bnaya Rubel, 20; Oren Simcha Noach, 22; Ben Itzhak Oanounou, 19; Daniel Pomerantz, 20; Shachar Tase, 20; Max Steinberg, 24; Tzafrir Baror, 32; Tsvi Kaplan, 28; Gilad Rozenthal Yacoby, 21; Oz Mendelovich, 21; Nissim Sean Carmeli, 21; Moshe Malko, 20; Jordan Bensemhoun, 22; Shon Mondshine, 19; Yuval Dagan, 22; Tal Ifrach, 21; Nadav Goldmacher, 23; Yuval Haiman, 21; Bayhesain Kshaun, 39; Dolev Keidar, 38; Oded Ben Sira, 22; Ohad Shemesh, 27, and Avitar Moshe Torjamin, 20. The civilian fatalities are: Dror Chanin, 37; and Uda Alwaj, 32.
NATHAN JEFFAY
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