The woman who fought to protect her children from a blood-thirsty Arab terrorist at her home in Otniel is being laid to rest this morning.
Daphna Meir, 38, knew well the value of life: she worked as a nurse at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva. When an Arab construction worker from within her own community of Otniel showed up Sunday evening at her doorstep, intent on murder, she fought with everything she had.
Three of her children came running, just in time to see their mother on the ground with the stab wounds from the murderer. The oldest daughter related to security officials that the terrorist had fled when he realized he could not pull out the knife he used to stab her mother over and over, in places on her body, and even on her head.
Meir was mother to four children and two foster children, wife to a husband who is now bereft.
The terrorist succeeded in escaping, but security forces are hunting for him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed they will find him.
But for now, this moment in time, Daphna Meir is being accompanied by her weeping family and friends, as she leaves the place that she loved, Otniel, in the south Hebron Hills. The funeral began there in the community at 9:30 a.m. Her mutilated body will gently be laid to rest, by those who love her best, in the Jerusalem cemetery in Givat Shaul, at 11 a.m.
May her memory be for a blessing, and may God avenge her blood.
