By Yoram Getzler. Please forgive the following long introduction to a moving article written in the aftermath of the brutal murders in the community of Itamar last week. Whatever your position, feelings, or beliefs about the Israeli enterprise of settlement in the former Jordanian areas of Palestine, you owe it to yourself to read, the challenging thoughts by a child of this undertaking and brother of the murdered Rabbi Fogel in the full article.
“Everyone came to the funeral of the Fogel family members murdered in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, from members of the national-religious youth movement Bnei Akiva, in their blue shirts, to the “hilltop youths,” with their long sidelocks. All the public leaders, Knesset members, settlement leaders and regional council heads came to the cemetery on March 13 to bury parents Udi and Ruthie, and children Yoav, Elad and Hadas.
The eulogizers’ words were aimed at the large crowd, the people of Israel and the prime minister. One spoke about incitement, another about the defense minister’s lax policy. Almost all were united in what they deemed the appropriate response to terrorism: building new settlements and neighborhoods.
Against this background, the voice of Motti Fogel, Udi’s older brother, stood out. “If I could, I would get rid of everyone here and whisper to you, ‘Let’s go play soccer one last time,'” he said. “All the slogans about Torah and land settlement, the Land of Israel and the Jewish people try to make us forget the simple fact that you are dead. A person is born to himself, to his parents and his siblings, and he dies to himself, to his children, and in very bad cases also to his parents and his siblings. You are not a symbol or a national event, your life bore a purpose unto itself and we must not let your terrible death become a tool, no matter what for.”
For the rest of the article:
at http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/the-private-side-of-a-public-tragedy-1.351740
