Death in the Army

“October is the cruelest month” to paraphrase T.S. Eliot.  This past October has been the heaviest month for military casualties since last October.  For the past thirteen months, I have had the honour to serve as a combat medic in an IDF Palmar (combat medical extraction unit) on the Gaza border.  In addition to physicians, paramedics, combat medics and troops, we also have soldiers of the Yasam unit.

The Yasam units’ purpose is to ensure that the fallen IDF heroes are identified and brought back for burial in Israel, all while being treated with the respect and honour due to them.

This October there were seventy military casualties, both on the northern and southern fronts, resulting in fifty-six fresh orphans and a continuation of the national trauma ignited by the terror attack last October 7.  There have also been an increasing number of reservists making the ultimate sacrifice, many of them from the religious Zionist stream of Judaism.  Every single fallen soldier must be processed by the selfless heroes who volunteer for the Yasam unit.

Unfortunately, I together with other soldiers in my unit, have been witness to what happens when the fallen soldiers are prepared by the Yasam unit.  After all of the deceased soldiers belongings are labeled and packed away, either to be returned to his family in the case of personal effects, or to the military.  After identification, the recently deceased soldier “lies in state” where an officiating Rabbi asks the soldier’s forgiveness for our being unable to save him, and praises him for the hero he is and the sacrifice he has made for all of us.   The mourners kaddish is then recited for the first time, as we mourn yet another valiant son of Israel.  Everybody present joins in, men, women, observant and secular.  It is truly a sober and gut-wrenching moment.

Just this past week I, together with thousands of other mourners, attended funeral for First Sergeant Nissim Meital in Hadera, whose sister is a combat medic in my unit.  The bereaved grandfather eulogised, “I am ninety and burying my twenty-year-old grandson.  It should be the other way round.” His mother, quoting from the Book of Psalms added, “Where will my help come from?”  and his twin brother collapsed on his grave.

We have learned in our long history that when our enemy declares their intent to murder Jews, we must believe them.   The almost unbearable price we are paying for our freedom as a people in our ancestral homeland is so high.  The alternative however is much worse.  We have learned the bitter lesson what happens to us Jews when we rely on the pity of our host nations.  We are indeed fortunate, with all the sorrow, to be living in a generation where we oversee our own destiny.  Unfortunately, freedom is not free.  Cry the beloved country.

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To hear more about my IDF unit’s experiences, press the “Call Me Back” podcast link below: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/call-me-back-with-dan-senor/id1539292794?i=1000673789193