For the last Friday night meal, the Nitzan family invited soldiers who are currently reinforcing the guard system in their hometown, Shilo in Binyamin. Fifteen minutes before Shabbat began, the father of the family, Yaakov, noticed the group of soldiers gathered at the entrance to the house. "I wonder why they came early," he wondered and opened the door.
Statement by the Chief of Staff: "The objectives of the war require a ground incursion - the best fighters are currently operating in Gaza"
Only when the delegation entered did he realize that he would never want to see these soldiers. "Who is this?" Ask them. His son Gilad served in Gaza, his son-in-law was moved to the north.
"It's Gilad," was the reply. Then, in an instinctive response, or perhaps in an attempt to deny the bitter news, he ordered the delegation to leave the house. "I want Judith to hear this with me. Everything we do together. We will do this together," he told the soldiers.
And so it was. A very difficult Shabbat but also strengthens the family's past, between the news of Job's death and the funeral on Saturday night.
Gilad Nitzan. "He died whole, beautiful, even with the wigs," photo: courtesy of the family
Gilad Nitzan was 21 years old when he fell in battle with terrorists in the heart of Gaza City, a kilometer from Shifa Hospital. According to what the parents were told, Gilad advanced in a spearhead squad between the alleys, with the company commander, Yehuda Cohen, and his unitmate Yonadav Levinstein. Although it had previously been ensured that the alley was free of terrorists, a group of them apparently emerged from one of the tunnels and fired booby-trapped fire at the three. They were killed instantly. Another soldier was wounded. The rest of the force continued fighting and eliminated the attackers.
I go through Gilad's pictures. There's not one he doesn't smile from ear to ear. "He was a heart. Love everyone, embrace everyone, friend to everyone," says Father Yaakov.
Between the end of high school and enlistment in the Givati Patrol, he studied at a yeshiva in Kfar Tapuah. From there he jumped to the south on Simchat Torah morning, upon learning of the Hamas attack. Last Tuesday, the family managed to visit him on the Gaza border, just before he went inside to fight. This was the last meeting.
"Between the cleansing of the envelope and the ground entrance, he told a little bit about what he went through," says mother Yehudit. "To his older sister, who is a social worker, he said he would need mental health treatment after what he saw on the kibbutzim. He emphasized that it did not weaken him and that he was now focused on the task, but said that he knew that later he would have to take care of his soul."
"And to a nurse who is studying medicine, he said that after what he saw, he understood anatomy more than she did," Jacob adds.
They are still talking and an unknown man sits down on the grass, behind the grieving father's chair. This is Gideon Bogle, the father of IDF martyr Adir Isto Bogle, a soldier of Golani's 13th Battalion, who was apparently murdered on the day the war broke out, while serving as a guard at the gate of the Nahal Oz base. For three days the father searched for him throughout the envelope, until the bitter news arrived.
With the swearing-in assistance for his own son, Bogle moves from one mourning comfort to another, strengthening the families who, like him, have joined the circle of bereavement.
"Someone upstairs saw and mixed us up"
"Blood has been touched," Yaakov Nitzan quotes the verse from the Book of Hosea and gives Bogle a long hug. "We're in a tub. Before the war, everyone clung to one side of it and told the other, the rightist, the leftist, the religious, the secular, 'Don't touch me, I don't want anything to do with you.' Someone upstairs saw this, and stirred the tub properly. What a blow we all got, what a blow. We are all one people."
Gilad and his father Yaakov. "Story haunts story, visitors come and go, including those who never knew the dead soldier or his family, and simply felt compelled to come," photo: courtesy of the family
"The fact that he didn't just die, but to save others, gives us meaning. Because he died not only for us, but for the entire nation of Israel that mourns him," adds mother Yehudit. "And he died whole, beautiful, even with the wigs. The rabbinical representative who dealt with him said that there was only one bullet, which entered from the hip and exited in the heart." "Because it's Gilad," adds Father Yaakov, "with him everything is a heart."
Story haunts story, visitors come and go, including some who never knew the dead soldier or his family, and simply felt compelled to come.
Those who cannot console are Gilad's friends, who are still on the battlefield. But their own hearts went out to the bereaved parents, so they equipped the body with a small test tube, filled with sand.
The sand test sent by Gilad Nitzan's friends, photo: courtesy of the family
"Give it to the family," they told a representative of the military rabbinate. "And tell them it's sand from the ground on which Gilad fell. We'll be back there."
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