Rest in peace, little lion cubs of God

Beloved Shiri, Kfir, and Ariel,

I am sorry.

I am sorry that we did not shout louder. That when Gazans violently snatched you from your beds — baby Kfir, from your crib — we did not make the earth shake demanding your safe return. I, personally, am sorry that I didn’t start every interview holding up your picture, and that when I did say that the October 7 monsters snatched a BABY FOR GOD’S SAKE, I failed to convey the horror of that fact. Maybe it’s because I failed to grasp that horror, because I didn’t want to grasp it. Maybe a different approach could have saved you. I don’t know. Forgive me.

An entire nation loved you more than you could possibly know. Because by the time we all knew your faces, you had been brutally murdered.

And because by the time you were brutally murdered, you, baby Kfir, were too young to even have the cognition to understand what love is.

You understood only the love of your mother, whom we last saw clasping you to her chest for dear life.

And of your father, whose love for you was used by those demons to torture him in hell, a man whose travails make Job look like he had it easy.

And of your brother Ariel, who never got to protect you like every big brother should.

But not of a nation, a nation that understood that the struggle for your freedom was also a struggle for the dignity of every Jew. And of every human being, even as many so-called humanitarians tore down and defaced your posters.

Because in your time in captivity, and in your deaths, you became symbols, the most terrible burden for any innocent to bear.

Kfir and Ariel — the little lion cubs of God.

We made a deal with the devil to get you back.

In your memory, we pledge to do our utmost to bring ALL the hostages home, and then to hunt the monsters who did this to the ends of the earth. The earth we will not let cover your blood. Because what those demons did to you must never again happen to another Israeli child.

* * *

I wrote these words on the bus, on the way to pay my last respects along the route as your bodies are taken from the morgue to the cemetery. The bus is full of people wearing orange and carrying flags, and we all know where the others are going.

In the Jewish tradition, we say: “May God comfort you among the rest of the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.” I never understood what that meant until I joined crowds singing that hope was not lost to be a free people in Zion, as a van with a baby’s coffin went by. Yarden, Ofri, Jimmy, Mauricio, and the whole family — may God comfort you in this crowd, the mourners of Zion. Our global Jewish family is weeping with you.

Rest in peace, Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir.