Hello everyone.
Peace also to Naphtali. Peace to Eyal. And peace to Gil-Ad.
Peace to their parents who taught us what simple and pure faith is.
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Peace to the people of Israel, who united above partisanship, ethnicity, and sectarianism, and prayed as one man with one heart for the individual.
Hello to my child, Ariel Shichia, only 4 years old, who asked for an igloo yesterday morning.
""No mom. Not one," he said, as we opened the freezer and pulled out one igloo for him.
""So what? How much do you need?" we asked.
"Everyone!" the kid replied.
"To everyone? Who exactly are you going to distribute it to?" we pressed again.
""To all the children in kindergarten!" he said decisively.
I don't know why, but we let him. There wasn't much time to think, and maybe we didn't have time to argue yesterday morning.
We packed him 35 igloos and sent him to kindergarten.
Two hours later, my wife gets a call from the kindergarten teacher. "Ariel stood up during recess and announced that whoever recites Tehillim for the hostages will receive an igloo..." She wanted to thank us for the initiative.
It took my wife a few moments to recover. "It's not us," she managed to blurt out. "It's him.... We had no idea what he was planning...""
And it turns out that they recited Psalms for the exaltation of the souls of the pure.
I know everyone is now discussing with fire in their eyes and fingers trembling on the keyboard, what punishment should be meted out to the human beings who committed this horrific massacre.
I read the posts calling for wiping out Gaza, putting every son of Ishmael on a one-way flight. Shutting down their power stations. Cutting off the water. Starving the prisoners. Blowing up the terrorists' homes. Preventing Arabs from being employed by Jews.
None of these actions will "justify" picking these flowers from my uncle's garden.
Today, when they are up there, stranded in a world where everything is good, right below the throne of honor, as royal martyrs - nothing on this list will do them any good.
On the other hand, if tomorrow (and next week, and even a year from now) when we meet that "other" who doesn't exactly dress like us, or didn't buy the kippah that suits our taste exactly, or (heaven be praised and earth beware) voted for a party that doesn't exactly stand for what "our" party stands for (what does it really stand for?), if when we meet the "other" we embrace and treat them with love, just like we have in the last 18 days - all together: Zechariah, secular Haredi and Hasidic, we ask what is happening with others and recite another chapter of Tehillim for the benefit of those in need - this will be the greatest and most painful revenge for the human filth that took Eyal, Naftali and Gil-Ad from me and us.
Before we discuss the demolition of the first and second houses (of the terrorists), let's discuss the building of the third house. This one is ours.
Then we can say hello and goodbye to the three dead.
We will see you soon, soon, soon, in our days, Amen.
And a final point:
This is the place to thank everyone who risked their lives to save them and/or at least to solve the shocking incident and we were privileged to bring them to burial. And to thank all the individuals, bodies and organizations, communities and non-profits who sent food, sweets, hugs and love to the families and the soldiers.
Thank you to everyone we know to thank, because we saw or heard what he did.
And thanks to thousands more people who worked behind the scenes from the Shin Bet, Military Intelligence and all the intelligence branches who put together piece by piece in a mad race against time, and only we don't know their names.
And a huge thank you to the children of Haidar 'Habar' who recited Tehillim, and to tens of millions more from all over the world who offered prayers.
Everything is recorded up there. Everything is recorded. And may only good things happen to us all.
Yours, Micah.
