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In Israel, Attending Funerals of Fallen Soldiers You Do Not Know

(Forward) Susan Greene - A good portion of the 2,000 mourners who crammed around the fresh grave of Sgt. Eliyahu Moshe Zimbalist, 21, on Mount Herzl's northern slope in Jerusalem one recent day and stood for nearly two hours in the 90-degree heat had no connection to Zimbalist, nor to the young man buried next to him right afterward, nor to the other two fallen soldiers whose funerals took place in the same row later that day and night, who had been killed the day before fighting in Gaza. Angela Stauber, 67, is one of scores or perhaps hundreds of Israelis who have made a practice of showing up to burials at military cemeteries throughout the country for the past nine months. She explained, "It is our country, our army, our soldiers, and this soldier died for me, which makes him anything but a stranger." Some see it as a civic duty, others catharsis, finding connection in a country wounded by months of war. David Shire, 64, a landscape gardener in Neve Daniel, started going to the funerals as a proxy for his youngest son, who lost friends on Oct. 7 and in the early weeks of the war, but could not attend himself because he was on active duty. "It's not like in Britain or America where I imagine most Jewish people wouldn't know a soldier - here, everybody has a kid, a cousin, a friend who's in the army," said Shire, who moved to Israel from Scotland in 1983. "They're all our kids."
2024-07-02 00:00:00
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