Crying with the mourners in Majdal Shams

“Do you know someone there?” she asked me.
“No. But I can’t stop seeing their faces. I have to go. I have to do something.”
“Please drive safely. Call me when you’re home.”

Majdal Shams is a good three-hour drive from where I live and to get there, one must drive through the north — the battered north of Israel that has been pounded by rockets from Hezbollah since October 8th. The gorgeous north that should now be full of camping families, but is all but devoid of people, with some 80,000 residents having been evacuated from their homes for their safety, and even local tourists staying away.

On Shabbat, Saturday, July 27, 12 children were killed by a rocket launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon. They were playing soccer. Young girls and boys. And teens. They so easily could have been my kids. The scenes were gut-wrenching, beyond any nightmare that has gone through my mind these last nearly-10 months of war. I felt I had to go pay my respects.

My father told me he wanted to join me, as did his friend Harris. I had no idea what to do or where exactly to go, so when some activists I know said they might go, I asked if we could meet up. We loosely planned to do so.

The drive was long. The day was hot. But one could pretend it was a normal day late in July, even enjoying the lack of traffic… until the emptiness of the usually bursting northern roads became ominous. Until the silence… the desolation… the eerie sense of abandonment was too obvious to ignore. 

For long stretches of roads, we saw no other cars or people. Parking lots at the starting points of local hikes, normally jam-packed with cars, sat empty. And every road looked like the one on the news a few weeks ago, showing the charred remains of the car hit by a Hezbollah rocket that killed Noa and Nir Baranes as they drove.

When my GPS abruptly stopped working, I didn’t know where to go. The screen just went blank. I knew Madjal Shams would be north, to my left, but seeing only cows and rocky fields, I suddenly felt very exposed and very unsure of myself. The people I had planned to meet in Majdal Shams were a good hour behind us, on the road north. 

I called Mansur Ashkar,  a Druze Israeli and an activist for Israel whom I knew was in the group we were set to meet. He sent me his cousin’s number. “Call him,” he said. “He will tell you what to do.” And Mahmud did exactly that, staying with me on the phone until I saw a road sign and he could give me exact directions. (Note to self: put a map back in the car!)

We must have spoken at least five times before he met us in person in Majdal Shams, where the center traffic circle held 12 chairs with soccer jerseys and soccer balls in memorial to the children.

A memorial to the children in Majdal Shams. (credit: Ester Springut)

Black flags flew everywhere. Police and soldiers, town leaders and volunteer traffic directors filled the entrance to the sports complex.

Mahmud led us to the soccer field. The scene of the massacre. It was quiet, even serene. But the people were shattered, broken.

I found myself shaking as I walked toward the site, my throat constricted. Twelve wreaths, 12 pictures of beautiful children. A torn fence. A hole in the ground. A pockmarked shelter maybe 20 feet away, which the kids had been running to when the rocket hit.

Images of the children killed by Hezbollah at the site of the rocket fall.

The shelter, merely feet away from where the rocket fell is pock marked from the impact.

Black ribbons are tied along the surrounding fence. I was told that each ribbon marks a place where body parts or flesh was found. The cement on the ground is stained with blood.

Black ribbons mark the places the flesh of children was found. Blood stains can still be seen on the concrete.

People thank us for coming, for sharing in their sorrow. They are gentle. Sad. Appreciative.

Mahmud shares that one child (Gevara Ebraheem) was missing for so long because they could find no remains. Nothing was left of him after the rocket fell directly upon him.

Mahmud introduced us to a few older women who wear the traditional religious white headscarf of the Druze. I cried with them. The women spoke only of wanting no more dead. No more suffering. Of ending war and living in peace. In their 74 years, they had never seen anything like this. Given their age, they were living in the Golan when it was under Syrian rule, prior to the Six-Day War. Unlike the Druze in the Galilee, whose homes became part of Israel with the founding of the Jewish state, the Golan Druze have only been in Israel since 1967, when the Golan changed hands. Many of the Golan Druze have refused citizenship, though they stayed on their home turf. They are residents of Israel with Syrian citizenship.

Druze tradition separates between men and women, Mahmud arranged for his wife Rim to escort myself and a few other women who had come to pay their respects to the women’s mourning area and he took my father and Harris to the men’s side. For the first three days, the Druze all mourn together (much like a shiva). The rest of the week, they separate, to their own homes.

Messages of concern poured in via my phone. Some of my people were not happy that we were in a danger zone. “Do you have sirens there?” Apparently, sirens were wailing in the Upper Galilee not far from where we were. I took our group closer to the shelter, but we did not leave. 

We took the arranged van up the hill to the hall. Chairs and people lined the streets outside. A United Hatzalah ambulance sat nearby, on standby. A statue of a Druze sultan flew black flags. Men gave out Druze coffee — black with cardamom, in tiny cups. People in the street thanked us for coming (we were clearly identifiable as not being locals).

The mourning hall with the mothers in the front row and family behind them.

The men and women separated, waiting on lines to comfort the mourners. The bleachers of the stadium-like hall were packed. Large pictures of each murdered child sat on chairs. Each child’s mother sat directly behind the poster of her child.

It was crushing. Devastating. And it seemed that the oxygen had been sucked from the room. 

Tears streaming, bereft of words, we offered gestures, sentiments, and the anguish in our hearts for the few seconds we had with each mother before the line pushed us forward. They responded, some crying, others in shock, some simply numb. They thanked us for coming and being with them.

My father speaking to a mother of a murdered child. Credit – image taken with permission from a video by Tal Oren who documented the visit. (YouTube)

Most of the people in the room were Druze, but there were other Jewish Israelis, and some Muslims as well, who had come to grieve with the community. We climbed the rows to sit in seats and just be with them in their time of pain.

Messages kept coming into my phone. “There are sirens and falls very close to you. Someone was just killed.”

I felt terrible worrying people, but being there was the right thing for me.

Knowing that I had no GPS, I asked Esther and Ilanit, two women who had come from their moshav in the Golan if I could follow them out, understanding that I would have to traverse the Golan south to return home, instead of taking the route west, through the Galilee, which was literally on fire. The rockets that had killed Nir Popko, 28, from Kibbutz HaGoshrim had started fires across the Galilee.

By now, we were a group. We met up with the men outside, drank more coffee, and were told by Rim and Mahmud that before leaving, we would come to their home and refresh ourselves.

Statue of a Druze Sultan, the flag in his hand black for mourning

Their home sits at the top of the hill, with a gorgeous view of Mount Hermon and the entire village. It is beautiful, spotless, warm and very homey. From the outside porch, Mahmud shows us the playground and soccer field where the rocket fell — in the center of the town — and where he was when he heard it. I spoke with Rim as she made the coffee and marveled at the woman who could have white carpeting in her kitchen — with not one spot on it!

Showing us Majdal Shams with the Hermon behind it.

Over coffee, wafers, and fruit, we heard about how Mahmud built his home (his brothers live on the floors below) and how he built a home for Shmuel, another Golan resident who joined our group and helped my father and Harris (who don’t speak Hebrew) navigate the men’s section.

I looked around the room as we chatted. Three Jewish Israelis from the Golan, a Druze couple, myself, my dad, and Harris, all family for the day… and perhaps beyond.

Rim, myself, Mahmud, Dad and Harris

With a three-hour drive ahead of me, I reluctantly said we needed to get on our way. Rim, and then Mahmud, invited us to sleep over, but I had worried my family members enough for one day. I did promise that I would come back, God willing, after the war was over, to accept their hospitality.

Smoke from the fires cross over the Golan.

Leaving was hard. I felt attached to the people I had met, the community I had discovered — and I knew it would be some time before we could return. In the western sky, a massive plume of cloud and smoke stretched eastward. The stench of fire was strong.

Shmuel, Ester and Ilanit show us the Syrian border

We followed Shmuel, Esther, and Ilanit down the Golan, past the massive wind turbines, old bunkers, and vast fields. Shmuel stopped to show us the border with Syria, a stone’s throw from the road we drove on, and then escorted us all the way to the Sea of Galilee, where he called to give us directions for the rest of the way, and invited us to return and visit them in their homes and see the Golan without war. Then, they turned left and we went right. 

As I drove, I thought about the phone call that morning. She asked if I knew someone in Majdal Shams. I didn’t then. I do now.