‘There are no wreaths left’: Israel begins burial of victims of Hamas attacks
Jerusalem’s streets have been quiet since Saturday’s devastating Hamas attack that killed at least 1,300 Israelis. But at the entrance to Mount Herzl, Israel’s military cemetery, cars and coaches lined the road outside for 500 metres in both directions as the country begins the long and sorrowful process of burying so many dead.
Thousands of people flowed up the steps to attend the back-to-back funerals of eight fallen soldiers on Thursday. Many were softly crying, the plaza at the top of the hill overflowing with mourners as family members of those killed paid tribute. Several people carried the Israeli flag, or had it draped around their shoulders, and a handful of men were carrying pistols and rifles.
Next to a makeshift flower stand, a hand-written sign on a piece of cardboard read: “You can take bouquets to the grave sites from here.” Most of the flowers were already gone.
At the burial of combat soldier Lt Shilo Cohen, 24, a sound system carried the voices of his family members from the white tent set up over the coffin to the crowds at the back. Not a single one of the bereaved managed to get through their farewells without crying.
“Our Shilo, look around, you can see many people here; instead of accompanying you to the celebration of your wedding, or the construction of a home, we are accompanying you to your eternal rest,” his father said.
“You died on a holy Shabbat five days ago, and your mother told me she could not sleep until you were buried.”
In dozens of towns and villages across Israel, the scene repeated. While in the Jewish tradition burials should take place as soon as possible, in Israel the delay is often limited to two days. In Islam the dead must be buried within three days, and ideally one. In the blockaded Gaza Strip, which has been pounded by Israeli airstrikes since Saturday, almost none of the 1,417 people killed so far have been interred yet because it is still too dangerous. But as with everything else that has rocked the region over the last six days, these are unprecedented circumstances.
Amid worries that the mass gatherings at funerals could pose a target for
Hamas rocket fire, the chief rabbis of Israel, David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef, issued a joint public statement on Sunday in which they said: “It is possible to attend funerals remotely by reciting chapters of Psalms in honour of the victims.”
For those killed who have only a handful of family members in the country, members of the public have stepped in to make a minyan, the quorum of 10 adults required for certain religious rites and events. After the mother and sister of 24-year-old Bruna Valeanu, who was killed at the kibbutz rave, put out a request on social media for eight more people to attend the Brazilian-Israeli’s funeral in Petah Tikva on Tuesday, 10,000 people came to pay their respects and share in her family’s grief.
In Zeitan, a town in the centre of the country, flower exporter Lihi Salpeter Danziger has organised 100 volunteers, working in shifts, to make funeral wreaths of roses and chrysanthemums that are then boxed and delivered to grieving families for free.
“You have to understand that there are no wreaths left in Israel any more,” she told Reuters. “People cannot get and cannot find flowers to take to funerals for the size of this event.”
Tirtsa Gil, a 25-year-old from Metula, on the Blue Line boundary with Lebanon, had driven south for the funeral of her friend Aran Cohen, 20, a military conscript who was killed responding to the attack on the kibbutz trance party that left 260 dead. She said she had been to three funerals in the last two days.
“My brain can’t take any of this in. I can’t even speak properly, I don’t have words,” she said. “My heart is broken … All our hearts are broken.”
For Or Baruch, 30, from the same moshav as Lt Dekal Suisa, a 23-year-old platoon commander, his fallen neighbour was a hero. “The whole moshav is here,” he said.
Yet for families of the estimated hundreds still missing, there still cannot be the closure of laying their loved ones to rest. The scale of the massacres in southern Israel’s towns, army bases and kibbutzim has become apparent this week, as reporters have been able to access the sites. More and more bodies are found each day.
Another estimated 100–150 people are believed to be held hostage in Gaza, where Palestinian factions have claimed four have already died in Israeli bombings, and Hamas has threatened to execute one Israeli for every strike on a civilian site in Gaza that is carried out without warning.
Keren Shem, whose daughter, Mia, has been missing since the kibbutz party, told Israel’s army radio on Thursday morning that no government officials had yet been in contact with her.
“I demand that the decision-makers drop everything now and ask for and demand an orderly list of the missing people, with names. Because my daughter may have bled to death – I don’t know. I demand to know,” she said.
There are many funerals still to come in the coming days and weeks across Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank. And for some of the bereaved, there may never be answers, or a body to bury.