Nation Mourns Israeli Reservists

Muffled sobs arose as the coffin of Daniel Ben-David, a husband, father and part-time paratrooper, was lowered into the earth Monday -- a scene that was repeated all across Israel as the country buried a dozen army reservists killed a day earlier in a single rocket attack.

For Israelis, the deaths represented a stunning communal loss -- not only because this was the greatest number of soldiers killed in a fell swoop since warfare with Hezbollah erupted July 12, but because those who died were ordinary Israelis called to military service only days ago.

Reservists occupy a peculiar place in the Israeli consciousness. Once mobilized, they no longer are civilians, yet fall into a distinctly different category than career soldiers or conscripts.

The concept of a “citizen army” is ingrained in Israel’s national ethos, dating back to the days of early statehood, when reservists got their call-up orders via their units’ code names read by a solemn-voiced announcer in scratchy radio or TV transmissions.

Because they range in age from their late 20s to their 40s, reservists who die in wartime leave a more complicated legacy than their younger compatriots -- and one that sends out wider ripples into Israeli society.

They are more likely to leave behind wives and children, careers and colleagues, and in many instances, a gaping hole in small communities.

All that was true in the case of Ben-David, 36, who was born and raised in the farming community of Ahituv -- a local boy who chose to settle into manhood here. When he married, he brought his wife, Yifat, home to the moshav, and they began raising their three young children.

The crowd at his funeral exceeded the population of Ahituv, a hamlet of about 800 people tucked in rolling hills northeast of Tel Aviv.

Nearly everyone in town turned out on this sun-hammered afternoon to pay their respects. They joined hundreds of others drawn from the overlapping circles of Ben-David’s life: his friends from his work as a sales manager, his army buddies, his wife’s family and friends, childhood playmates who had moved away.

And while people waited for the coffin to be borne to the gravesite, they talked quietly of little else but the war in Lebanon -- whether Israel’s survival was really at stake in the confrontation with Hezbollah, how long the conflict might last, and how many lives it would cost.

All that was put aside in a burst of sobbing as Ben-David’s father, Benjamin, delivered a eulogy to his youngest son, with the crowd in the cemetery overflowing into a stubbled field.

“My son, my love, my eyes -- this cannot be for nothing,” said Benjamin Ben-David. “To me, you are still full of life, loved by everyone.”

Like Ben-David, the others killed in Sunday’s rocket strike on a border kibbutz commandeered by the military as a staging area had stepped out of their daily lives -- temporarily, they thought -- to serve at the front. One was a horticulturist. Another taught immigrant youth from Ethiopia. Another worked for a dairy company.

Although the conflict has ground on for nearly a month, reservists’ deaths are a relatively new phenomenon.

Elite combat units carried out most of the initial ground forays across the border; no reservists died inside Lebanon until two were killed this last weekend. One of them was a doctor who had been stationed in a safer rear position, but appealed to his commander to let him move forward to treat the wounded.

Some Israeli commentators called the reservists’ deaths a potential turning point in public sentiment about the battle with Hezbollah.

Sunday’s lethal strike was “a huge test for the Israeli consensus on this war,” Alex Fishman wrote in the Yediot Aharonot daily. “The ‘people’s army’ is beginning to pay a price.”

Hanoch Yerushalmi, a Hebrew University psychologist who has studied the phenomenon of reserve service, said reservists act as a bridge between society as a whole and the standing army.

“So I think in some ways the deaths of reservists affects people differently than those of regular soldiers,” he said. “The population in a way feels closer to them, identifies more with them.”

Before receiving a call-up notice, Ben-David had contacted his unit commander to volunteer for service, officers said.

“That was very like him,” said Koby Nahon, who had known Ben-David since they were teens.

“He thought it was his duty to go, so he went,” Nahon said. “But that way of behaving, the kind of person he was -- that is exactly what makes it so hard for all of us to accept that he is really gone.”