Love and rage: A tale of two funerals (and One Cowardly Protest)
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| "IT IS A MITZVAH TO EVADE THE DRAFT" |
Yesterday, I attended the funeral of 23-year-old Sgt. First Class Yona Bezalel Brief. His family had called on the public to accompany the burial and many thousands did. We gathered on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl for a ceremony that has become agonizingly familiar to all Israelis since the October 7 massacres. There is the flag-enshrouded coffin, the reciting of the kaddish and El Maleh Rahamim prayer, the commander’s eulogy, the laying of the wreaths, and the honor guard’s salute. And yet, for all their similarities, each of the funerals is different, as was poignantly clear at Yona’s.
His was a story of unfathomable – one might almost say superhuman – strength; of family and faith. A combat medic in the IDF’s elite Duvdevan commando unit, Yona had already been wounded the previous May and offered a medical discharge. He refused. Returning to his post, he was among the first soldiers to charge into Kibbutz Kfar Aza on the morning of October 7 and to unhesitatingly engage its Hamas butchers. His best friend, Amir Fisher, and their commander, Ben Bronshtein, both of blessed memory, were immediately shot. Yona ran to them, heedless of his own safety, and was himself grievously wounded. Later, I heard how, despite his two shattered legs and thirteen bullet wounds, Yona kept caring for others.
Unlike that of the 1,200 people slaughtered on October 7, Yona’s death would occur 417 days later. Throughout virtually that entire period, Yona was hospitalized in the intensive care unit of Sheba Medical Center. There, attended by a team of doctors and nurses dedicated to his survival, he underwent numerous operations and massive infusions of antibiotics. His parents, David and Hazel, along with his four siblings, never left his bedside. Saving Yona’s life became theirs.
I visited him there once, many months ago, and saw a young man who, though legless above his knees, unable to rise from his bed, and barely capable of speech, nevertheless radiated an intense determination to live. He loved history and wanted to read my books. And though patently suffering, he never lost his faith. At the funeral, Hazel spoke of his insistence on putting on tefillin, and of how she wove the leather straps through the many tubes and bandages on his arm.
The funeral was longer than any I remember simply because so many people had so much to say about Yona. Though often difficult to hear through their sobs, friends and family members spoke of his indomitable spirit, his humor, his warmth. But there was also Prof. Yitshak Kreiss, Director General of Sheba Medical Center, who hailed Yona as “one of the greatest heroes in the history of Israel.” But the most memorable remarks were delivered by his mother, and not only because they, alone, were in English.
“My sweet Yona, from your ICU room, messages of hope, faith, and love for our precious country washed over our battered and exhausted nation. Yes, you, my love, became the focus of doing things to make this world better, to make our country just a bit better. Because everyone wanted Yona to win this battle and finally go on to rehabilitation. We were all in for you, dear Yona, and you were all in for Am Yisrael.”
All in for Am Yisrael. Those words continued to pierce me as I looked around at the thousands of faces, many of them tear-streaked, fixed on the grave. Most of them were young people, many of them soldiers in uniform, still carrying their guns. Some wore jackets emblazoned with the twin red dots of Duvdedan, the Hebrew word for cherry. Only the IDF, I thought, with commando squads called Ibis, Kingfisher, and Diamond, would name one of its special forces unit Cherry. Only Israelis, though steeled and traumatized by fourteen months of war, would unite in a display of unrestrained vulnerability, of compassion, and above all, love.
Along with sorrow, love abounded – for Yona, of course, but also for the land and the country he loved, for Jerusalem and the Jewish people. Utterly absent from the ceremony was the slightest mention of the evil forces that killed Yona, no expressions of anger, no calls for revenge. Only the honor guards’ shots, reverberating through the trees and myriad headstones atop Mount Herzl, recalled the bitter war that stole this hero’s life.
I returned home that night and, as always, switched on the TV news. There was footage of another funeral, this one held in Dahieh, the Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood in Beirut. Many thousands attended this event as well, though almost all of them were men. They thronged around the coffin shouting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” Fist-pumping the air, they vowed to avenge the martyr’s death with blood and fire. If there was sadness, it took second place to rage and demands for retribution. The mourners pledged to follow the dead man’s example and give their lives for jihad. Heaven would be their reward.
Two funerals, one of solemnity and silence and the other of ferocity and wrath. Two ceremonies that said everything about their participants and the values they represent. Witnessing them both in the space of several hours, reminded me of a remark made twenty-four years ago, at the start of the Second Intifada by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. “This is not a battle between armies,” he said, “but a struggle between societies. The stronger one will win.”
Israel won that struggle and will win this one as well, and not only – or even mostly – because of our superior military might. We will win because of the inestimable resilience of Israeli society, our vast but understated strength. Because of our determination to defend ourselves against those seeking to destroy us not by descending to their depth of barbarism but by rising to our own ideals.
Yona Brief embodied those ideals and, in parting from him, so, too, did thousands of Israelis. They listened as Eviatar Banai, the brilliant composer and musician whose scheduled performance for Yona in the ICU was preempted by his death, offered a simple yet impassioned prayer. “Oh Father,” he sang. “I want to be sure with all my heart that this journey will have a good end and that all I’m going through along the way will turn a wickedness into an immense strength.”
“Oh, my dove,” he concluded. Dov, in Hebrew, is Yona. “Sing a new song for me that will light up my heart and strings.”
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/love-and-rage-a-tale-of-two-funerals/