![\"Mourning](\"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Mourning-our-boys2.jpg\")
<\/a>Mourning our Boys<\/p><\/div>
\nAs the news hit international outlets, I was stunned by some of the callus comments:\u00a0 \u201cWhy all this fuss about only three boys in a region where 50 rockets land every day?\u201d\u00a0 I wanted to howl in outrage, comment back, tell the person how horrible he was being.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Instead I write this.\u00a0 Because this comment got me thinking.\u00a0 What had we as a people become?\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n
Because what happened here in Israel after the news broke last night is something I will never forget as long as I live.\u00a0 It was a Monday night like any other.\u00a0 The streets were quiet, the busyness of the day winding down.\u00a0 And then something changed:\u00a0 Israel came out to mourn her sons.\u00a0 It took about an hour for the streets to fill up.\u00a0 A steady trickle of mommies and daddies, holding their little ones tightly as if to tuck them away safely.\u00a0 Of young people angry with grief.\u00a0 And of old people resigned to a sadness they\u2019ve experienced so many times in the past.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t planned, wasn\u2019t organised or advertised.\u00a0 And yet they came.\u00a0 Armed with candles and flags and pictures of the three murdered boys.\u00a0 The vigils lasted for hours.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Because ever since their disappearance nearly three weeks ago, these boys became everybody\u2019s sons, everybody\u2019s brothers.\u00a0 Everybody prayed, hoped and worried with the families.\u00a0 And now that their sons have been found murdered, everybody mourns together.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s something that our Western culture doesn\u2019t understand.\u00a0 This collective unity, this sense of family, of being a son, a daughter, of belonging.\u00a0 We don\u2019t get it.\u00a0 And it is something we miss out on.\u00a0 Which brings me back to the heartless comment I told you about earlier.\u00a0 Perhaps it is because of the situation here in Israel, the constant clouds of violence and war.\u00a0 Perhaps it is because of the terrible history where the world said that Jewish life mattered so little.\u00a0 Perhaps that is exactly why life here is valued so highly.\u00a0 Perhaps that is why Israel understands something we have forgotten, or never knew for that matter.\u00a0 Perhaps that is why the Israelis have learnt to live out loud.<\/p>\n
Perhaps.\u00a0 But as I stood amongst Israel mourning her sons as one last night, I saw the words of Galatians 6:2 in action, \u201cCarry each other\u2019s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n
I fell asleep last night with the following words running through my mind, \u201cComfort, o comfort My people,\u201d says your God.\u00a0 \u201cSpeak kindly to Jerusalem.\u201d\u00a0 (Isaiah 40:1).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Elisabeth Hinze Monday night at about 18:30 the news broke here:\u00a0 the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers had been found:\u00a0 murdered and buried under a pile of rocks near the city of Hebron.\u00a0 Eyal Yifrach (19), Gil-ad Shaar (16) and Naftali Fraenkel (16) were abducted on 12 June while making their way home from school more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[625,258,277,125,259],"class_list":{"0":"post-1717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorial","8":"tag-israeli-news","9":"tag-kidnapped-israeli-boys","10":"tag-murdered-boys","11":"tag-news-from-jerusalem","12":"tag-terrorism","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1719,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/1719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}