{Originally posted to the JNS website}
Born too soon. Dead too soon. Laid to rest without having had a minute of peace during his short life. A pure soul, unmarred by sin.
The profound bewilderment caused by savage murder has no age; murder is murder. But when it happens in this way—before the victim even saw the light of day—the pain is so much greater. He was targeted with murderous intent, rushed prematurely from his mother’s womb into bloody chaos and was left with no choice but to fight to survive.
A baby delivered in an emergency cesarean section in the 30th week of pregnancy was ultimately taken from this world. This days-old infant will not be forgotten. His first and last bed was an incubator full of tubes and beeping machines. Then he died.
One of the reasons the doctors decided to deliver him was to save his mother, Shira, who had been shot in a terrorist attack. That is how medicine works—a mother’s life takes precedence over the life of a fetus. The little guy held on to life with his tiny fingers for four days.
In a horrifying turn of events, he loosened his grip on life shortly after being reunited with his mother, who had been in intensive care as well. One can only imagine how excited Shira must have been to see him for the first time. But a short while after they first laid eyes on each other, both wounded and exhausted, he passed away. The baby, who had no name (we called him Shira’s son in our prayers), was named Amiad Yisrael (“my eternal nation Israel”) upon his death.
The murderers remain nameless. And that is how it should be. Nameless and faceless. May they be forgotten forever. May their named be erased.
Let us refrain from using the passive form of the verb. The baby was not “murdered.” Lowly Arabs murdered him. They aimed an automatic rifle at his young mother’s abdomen and fired. A cell of Islamist terrorists spilled the blood of a young woman and the blood of a fetus.
Back in 1929, during the Arab riots in Palestine, Muslims tore open the stomachs of pregnant women and intentionally massacred unborn children. These sons of Satan derive joy from every life taken: young children, pregnant women, the elderly, parents, families. A culture of death. We, on the other hand, have life, and will have life.
Shira and her husband, Amichai, are mourning their son. They are in shock, broken in body and in spirit. But they have entered all of our hearts.
It is our wish for you, Shira and Amichai—that you will have sons and daughters. From this tragedy, the entire nation hopes you will build a magnificent family, like the families that you were raised in. Flowers will grow from the earth where Amiad Yisrael was taken.
