Before we get to the video above
and the story of Major Dvir Fima below, we are sharing this video from Rachel Goldberg Polin, in which she asks all of us to take a step in marking, reminding and remembering the plight of the hostages, the plight of her son, Hersh.
To put it mildly — she’s asking. Who are we not to oblige? And frankly, bag that idea of putting it under your shirt. If you live in a place where you can’t wear a piece of tape with a number on it over your shirt — you definitely live in the wrong place.
And now to the focus of today’s post:
The words in the background of the video above are from a song called La-Chazor Ha-Baytah, “Coming Home,” by a group called Hatikva 6.
In Hebrew, they read
אבל הכי אני אוהב לחזור הביתה אחרי שלא הייתי כל הלילה למצוא את השלווה שאני חי בה לפשוט מעליי את החיים איך אני אוהב לחזור הביתה ללב של האישה שאני חי איתה להחזיר את השפיות שלי אליי כבר את כל הרגעים הרגילים איך אני אוהב לחזור הביתה
A rough English translation is:
But most of all I love coming home After I was gone all night To find the tranquility I live in shed my life off of me How I love to come home To the heart of the woman I live with to restore my sanity back to me already All the usual moments How I love to come home
That video is a quick shot of Major Dvir David Fima, 32, coming home to his wife, Ofek, and his son, Harel, for a visit a bit over a month ago. Here are more shots of the visit:
Dvir Fima became a bit of a household name in Israel after he gave the following interview to Israeli television, an interview to which we have added English subtitles. People saw in the interview a thumbnail of this young generation of fighters, leaving wives and children at home, putting everything on the line to defend a country they care about far more than anyone imagined.
Here’s his interview:
After 50 days of combat, Fima also had a chance to reunite with his father, a moment that someone posted on Instagram:
That, tragically, would be their last embrace.
On December 27, not long after he gave the above interview, Major Dvir Fima, z’’l, was killed in battle. He noticed an explosive device near his troops and jumped onto it, using his body as a shield between the detonated weapon and the other soldiers in his unit.
It’s worth revisiting that comment in his interview, when he said, “When it comes to the lives of those who are fighting with you ... you know what you need to do,” as well as his last words from that interview, words that he asked to add, even when the interviewer had thought that they were done:
You asked if we miss our families. We all miss our families, but it is also important for me say that we will stay here for as long as we need to, and however long they say so that in another 40 years, 50 years, the residents of the south and the State of Israel will actualize its sovereignty. So that every farmer who is close to the border can pick his orange, his lemon, and his tangerine safely.
And that is our mission here, to ensure this, I hope for generations to come.
None of us knows how this war is going to end, how long it will drag on, on how many fronts it will be fought. We do not know if we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of the war, or the very beginning of a long conflict still ahead of us.
We have absolutely no idea what the State of Israel will be like when this is all over.
What we do know, though, is that somehow, this country has managed to produce a generation of young people, people whom many called “leftists” or “anarchists” or whatever over the past year, suggesting that they just wanted to code and have IPOs, and didn’t care about the country their grandparents founded.
Turns out that all those people were simply wrong. Israel’s younger generation is made of something that is hard to describe, impossible to define. But that something is extraordinary.
When this is all over, those of us still here are going to have one fundamental obligation: creating a country worthy of their devotion and sacrifice.
May the memory of Dvir Fima and all the other fallen be a blessing.
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