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Making up for the heartbreaking obscurity of these innocent victims is one of the deepest and truest reasons for the State of Israel to exist. ” Where a suicide bomber has struck, the victims are arranged near the carcass of the bus. They are placed in heavy black bags, to which are attached a Polaroid photo, a preliminary report, and a card with a number. Many of the victims still have the number assigned to them by the Nazis tattooed on their arms. If the ashes of the Holocaust have led back to the names of the millions killed, the bodies torn apart in suicide bombings have led us back to the individual destinies of Israel, to a name, to the spirit that illuminated a life—even the small, obscure life of an immigrant, dirt poor, who dreamed of living in that land of refuge.

The first went through Sarit’s heart, killing her instantly. The three shots fired at the children miraculously missed their targets. Shai was struck four times in the throat, once in the heart, and once in the lungs. He spent thirteen hours in surgery and two weeks in a coma. When he woke up, he saw Uri sitting there. “Forgive me,” he said. ” In Jerusalem, at the Yad Vashem memorial, visitors can peruse the giant archive that houses the names of the Holocaust victims. Of all the monuments dedicated to the Holocaust, which by their nature are monuments of emptiness, these plain walls with their endless expanse of names are the most poignant.

They tied his body to the car bumper and drove toward the city. Then they got rid of the body. That’s how life ended for one sixteen-year-old Jewish boy. Why has Ofir’s story never been held up as an example of what ethnic-religious hatred can do? Why doesn’t anyone know the name of Eliyahu Asheri? He was eighteen years old, the son of an Australian convert to Judaism. He looked at life with a smile, and was hitchhiking home when they caught him. Whenever a Palestinian dies, even a suicide bomber, the newspapers fall all over themselves to publish his story and photographs.