By Elisabeth Hinze
Monday night at about 18:30 the news broke here: the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers had been found: murdered and buried under a pile of rocks near the city of Hebron. Eyal Yifrach (19), Gil-ad Shaar (16) and Naftali Fraenkel (16) were abducted on 12 June while making their way home from school for the weekend. For nearly three weeks thousands of soldiers searched and thousands of people here in Israel (and around the world) prayed for their safe return home. But that wasn’t to be.
As the news hit international outlets, I was stunned by some of the callus comments: “Why all this fuss about only three boys in a region where 50 rockets land every day?” I wanted to howl in outrage, comment back, tell the person how horrible he was being. But I didn’t. Instead I write this. Because this comment got me thinking. What had we as a people become? How did it become okay to evaluate the lives of three human beings against the larger circumstances and find it a mere blip on the radar?
Because what happened here in Israel after the news broke last night is something I will never forget as long as I live. It was a Monday night like any other. The streets were quiet, the busyness of the day winding down. And then something changed: Israel came out to mourn her sons. It took about an hour for the streets to fill up. A steady trickle of mommies and daddies, holding their little ones tightly as if to tuck them away safely. Of young people angry with grief. And of old people resigned to a sadness they’ve experienced so many times in the past.
It wasn’t planned, wasn’t organised or advertised. And yet they came. Armed with candles and flags and pictures of the three murdered boys. The vigils lasted for hours. As I went to bed at 2:00 this morning, the candles outside my house were still burning, the people still praying and holding one another. All across Israel the nation pulled together, turned to each other in a way that I have never seen before. Because ever since their disappearance nearly three weeks ago, these boys became everybody’s sons, everybody’s brothers. Everybody prayed, hoped and worried with the families. And now that their sons have been found murdered, everybody mourns together.
It’s something that our Western culture doesn’t understand. This collective unity, this sense of family, of being a son, a daughter, of belonging. We don’t get it. And it is something we miss out on. Which brings me back to the heartless comment I told you about earlier. Perhaps it is because of the situation here in Israel, the constant clouds of violence and war. Perhaps it is because of the terrible history where the world said that Jewish life mattered so little. Perhaps that is exactly why life here is valued so highly. Perhaps that is why Israel understands something we have forgotten, or never knew for that matter. Perhaps that is why the Israelis have learnt to live out loud.
Perhaps. But as I stood amongst Israel mourning her sons as one last night, I saw the words of Galatians 6:2 in action, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.”
I fell asleep last night with the following words running through my mind, “Comfort, o comfort My people,” says your God. “Speak kindly to Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 40:1). I pray that the God of Israel, Who is the source of all comfort and encouragement (2 Corinthians 1:3-4), comforts and consoles His children in the time ahead.
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