Since the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, anonymous people have been flocking to Israeli cemeteries to bury victims whose loved ones are absent.
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In Israel, in recent weeks, the victims of the October 7 terrorist attack have been buried, sometimes without anyone near them to accompany them to the cemetery. These deceased either have too few family in the country, or their loved ones themselves were victims of Hamas. To prevent them from being buried without a real ceremony, messages are exchanged on social networks to encourage anonymous people to come and attend solidarity burials. At the Yarkon cemetery in Tel Aviv, hundreds of people take part in the ceremonies.
“I just received a message on Facebook saying that this family doesn’t have many relatives here”, explains Haïm, who does not know the man to whom the crowd is paying tribute. Vitaly Tarpanov, 50, was an Orthodox Christian whose body was just found in the Nir Oz kibbutz. He was killed by Hamas and his entire family was taken hostage in Gaza: his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law and their grandmother too.
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More than 200 people gathered
Around 200 people gathered “so that those around you don’t feel alone in facing all this.” Haïm once went to this kibbutz: “I saw Gaza from two kilometers away and thought how brave these people were to live under the threat of rockets every day.” Many residents of Nir Oz were peace activists. “The Palestinians broke that, regrets Haim, It breaks my heart, it brings tears to my eyes. It’s a privilege for me to be here and pay tribute to this man.”
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The priest is Russian Orthodox, but many of those who grab a shovel and help cover the shroud with sand have a yarmulke on their heads. “It’s a brother who falls, says Ytsi, who doesn’t know anyone here either, it is a way of making a nation. No one here dresses the same. We are all brothers, whether we are right-wing, left-wing, religious or not.” For Yitsi, Hamas at least allowed Israelis to understand that they had to come together.
In Israel, solidarity funerals for the victims of the Hamas attack