July 22

Tuesday

Tel Aviv

Day 6 of the War

After the funeral in Haifa there is, as customary a daily Shiva call to the house of the berieved, to sit with them for 7 days during the worst of the shock.As soon as the expected morning siren is over, Sara and her friends will head over to the shiva house.  At the funeral the fallen soldiers' parents could not speak, nor could the girlfriend who had found 'the one' but the aunt and friends more than made up for it. At the funeral the next day at Har Herzl in Jerusalem of the second fallen American Lone Soldier, the mother from Los Angeles, who had never been to Israel before, summoned the courage to speak. She said that being in Israel, she now understood her son's inspiration and deep commitment, and preferred to hold the week of shiva in a hotel room in Jerusalem rather than carry her son's body back home. He was resting where he belonged.
Such sacrifice, such unspeakable sadness, but the Caliphate had decided to fight, and thus so must we.