The Value of Each Life

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
08 August '10

In Israel, each life is precious...to a magnitude that is foreign in most countries. We hear on the news about each traffic death, most criminal murders, EVERY terrorist incident that leads to injury. After we hear about the injury or the death, we learn about the person. It is as if we cannot let them go, until we know them better. For those of us who did not have the opportunity, the privilege of knowing them in life, we meet them in death.

It is agony. It is painful. It is sad. It is so right. Their lives had values. They were loved. Their families mourn for them today and forever. We too have lost something precious and so it is only right that we meet them after parting, if not before.

Elie was reading the newspaper and came across the latest statistics of casualties in the ongoing Iraq War. He was stunned by the numbers. He read them off to me.

"Four thousand, four hundred and thirteen American soldiers," he said.

I was shocked by the numbers. If you do not live in Israel, you cannot imagine what that number means to an Israeli. We mourn for a single loss, we agonize over more, we are broken in pieces by three or four, or, God forbid more. "Four thousand, four hundred," I repeated back to Elie.

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Another kind of double standard

Fresnozionism.org
05 August '10

On Tuesday I wrote about “Murder on the northern Border“. Since then, several things have become clear. UNIFIL has confirmed that the Israeli soldiers were on their side of the border. Lebanese army sources have admitted (proudly) that they fired first. There’s no doubt that the ambush was carefully planned, and Hizballah-connected journalists and photographers were on hand to report it.

What still isn’t clear, as I said on Tuesday, was from how far up the chain of command the orders came. For what it’s worth, there are Lebanese sources that say it came from the top.

Israel’s reaction was muted. The decision was apparently made that this incident didn’t need to trigger a full-scale war, with rockets flying and bombers destroying Lebanon’s infrastructure. There are contingency plans which weren’t activated.

But this can’t be allowed to just fade away. A man was murdered, a Jew was murdered because he was a Jew — yes, that is the motivation here.

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Murder on the northern border

Fresnozionism.org
04 August '10

I’m sure that the family of Lt. Col. (res.) Dov Harari didn’t expect that he would not return from his annual stint of reserve duty.

Harari, 45 years old and from Netanya, was a battalion commander in the IDF Engineering Corps. Early this afternoon, he was supervising soldiers who were clearing brush next to the security fence near the Israel-Lebanon border along with Capt. Ezra Lakia, 30, from Kfar Harif. This is a routine activity, carried out entirely on the Israeli side of the border, and coordinated with UNIFIL peacekeepers.

Suddenly a Lebanese Army armored vehicle appeared on a nearby rise. Two snipers got out and opened fire directly at the officers. Lt. Col. Harari was hit in the head and killed, and Capt. Lakia was critically wounded in the chest (he was airlifted to Rambam Hospital in Haifa where he underwent surgery, in part to remove fragments from his heart; he has been reported in stable condition).

The Lebanese soldiers did not call out to the Israelis or fire warning shots. They shot to kill, in what can only be called an act of cold-blooded murder.

Israeli soldiers returned fire. Several Lebanese soldiers and a journalist were killed (we’ll get to the journalist later).

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