My younger kids came home today from school and said that they had remembered the Simhat Torah invasion (October 7 2023) by learning about a fallen soldier who was a graduate of their primary school. His mother came and talked to the class about her son. They said they didn't remember her name, but they remembered that the soldier's name was Yona and he was a combat medic who was gravely wounded saving lives in kibbutz Kfar Azza on that terrible day.
Yona's parents were two of the first people we met when we moved to the neighbourhood many years ago. A mutual friend said to us that if we were moving to the area we had to meet this wonderful family they knew there.
On the news this evening commentators and the news anchor were remembering the fallen by telling stories of family and friends. Several them had served with the fallen son of a family friend, my future husband's boss who one afternoon closed the office early and took us all out to a typical Israeli grill diner to celebrate our (as yet unofficial) engagement, the first person to wish us mazal tov.
This is how small Israel, every Israeli is in some way connected to what happened, every Israeli wherever they live lost someone or knows someone who did. Even if they themselves weren't in the Otef, the Gaza border area, at the time of the Hamas invasion and murderous rampage through the Israeli towns, villages and music festivals taking place that holiday weekend.
When I talk to people from larger countries they generally don't understand this close-knit nature of Israeli society, a community of 10 million souls where it feels like everyone knows everyone, multiple levels of interconnectivity that make every loss that much more personal even if that particular fallen soldier or terror victim is not someone you know, is a complete stranger, but they could so easily be someone we have in some way crossed paths with.
I wish that our kids didn't have to learn about graduates from their school or family friends' children because of this awful war of self-defense our country has been forced to fight in the wake of the October 7th Hamas invasion. But if this is the situation our nation finds itself in then I am honoured that the young men and women who rushed to save so many lives on that terrible day and in the weeks, months and years afterward, were and are men and women like Yona Brief of blessed memory.
