Thousands Pay Respects to Salomon Family

by Andrew Friedman

More than 10,000 Israelis, including Housing Minister Yoav Galant, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, Communications Minister Ayoub Kara, Opposition Leader Yitzhak Herzog and a swath of Knesset members from the Labor, Likud and Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) parties descended on the city of Modi’in for the joint funeral of Yosef, Chaya and Elad Salomon, who were butchered in their home in the Samaria town of Neve Tsuf (Halamish) on Friday night.

Yosef Salmon’s wife, Tova, was seriously injured in the incident while several other family members, who had gathered for Shabbat to celebrate a birth in the family, were home at the time of the attack but escaped physically unharmed.

Several hundred mourners formed a human chain from the Salomon home to the cemetery, with Israeli flags lining the winding road from Neve Tzuf towards the coastal plain.

Rabbi Yonatan Glass, rabbi of the community, eulogized the victims as a family centered “on spreading happiness.”

“Only a person with no glimmer of humanity could have acted against Yossi (Salomon) and his family. Yossi made everyone he was around, happy. He was a generous donor, both to community causes and to poor families,” Glass said.

Ahead of the funeral service, Rafi Mendel, the husband of one of the surviving sisters, said the appropriate reaction to the terror attack would be to annex Judea and Samaria.

“Please, God, grant your wisdom and understanding to our prime minister. It’s time to understand that we need to end the Palestinians’ illusions that they will ever have control over our land.

“It is time to impose our sovereignty over all of it,” Mendel said.