Jerusalem – IN PHOTOS: Wailing, Crying As Relatives Say Final Goodbyes To Israeli Soldiers Killed

Jerusalem – Innocently Noam Bar thought her boyfriend had returned from Gaza to surprise her when his family asked her to come over.

The sudden excitement of holding him close soon turned into an unimaginable nightmare when the IDF called to explain that her beloved, St.-Sgt. Tal Yifrah, 21, had been killed in Gaza on Monday.

“I started to wail like a crazy person,” Bar said on Tuesday as she eulogized him in the small military cemetery in Yifrah’s home city of Rishon Lezion.

She stood just a few feet away from his freshly dug grave, as she described for the hundreds of mourners, some wounded from battle in Gaza, how she had planned to marry and live the rest of her life with Yifrah.

The young woman broke into tears, as did many of the mourners, as she spoke to them of her deep love for Yifrah.

“My Tal-shuk,” Bar said using a nickname of endearment.

“My light, my angel, my life,” she said. “You were everything to me. We were perfect together. We had the same sense of humor. You always knew what I was thinking. I will never find anyone like you,” she said.

“You were suppose to be the father of my children,” a tearful Bar said. “We planned our future together and now it will never happen.”

“I will do everything I can to build a memorial for you. You won’t simply lie in a grave or be a statistic,” Bar said.

“My heart is dedicated to you. This cemetery will be my second home. I will never forget you. I love you, wrest on your laurels in peace, you are a hero Tal, see how people love you and are proud of you.

“Oh Tal,” she said, as she ended in tears.

His older sister Noy also started her eulogy by promising herself that she would be strong and would not cry, but soon broke that pledge.

“I woke with you every morning and went to sleep with you every night. You were my best friend, how can I live without you,” she said.

Noy said that she and Tal were inseparable. She recalled how they fell asleep together in front of the television, how she bought him clothing and how she learned to cook, just so she could feed him. On Friday, he called and promised her that he would return, Noy recalled.

“You are my hero and my pride, it because of you that we are standing here. You are the best fighter, there will has been and never will be someone like you. A person who is so beloved,” Noy said. Even after he was buried, Bar and his family members surrounded the grave, reluctant to leave, Wearing a torn black shirt, his mother, wailed at the grave, almost unable to stand. Her relatives held her up, and at times poured water over her face.

Bar sat on the ground and spoke half to him and half to the mourners.

“We were suppose to get married. We never fought and if we did, we made up in a second,” Bar said between tears as she described their four year relationship.

“We didn’t marry because we were too young,” she said.

“We were together for four years and now it’s over,” she said, as she caressed his grave filled with wreaths and bouquets of flowers.

“Rest my beloved, you are in heaven, now rest,” she said.

There is no logic that you will miss our kids starting first grade, bat mitzva and weddings,” said in bewilderment Michal Keidar, the widow of Lt.-Col. Dolev Keidar, at the funeral of the highest- ranking IDF officer to fall in combat since 2011.

Keidar’s Modi’in funeral was attended by Defense Ministry Director-General and former deputy IDF chief Dan Harel, at least four generals, former IDF spokesman Brig.-Gen. (res.) Avi Benayahu, the IDF chief rabbi, the mayors of Kfar Saba and Modi’in and around 1000 attendees.

Keidar was killed early on Monday along with three soldiers under his command, when his vehicle was hit by a Hamas anti-tank missile in an ambush when Hamas fighters emerged from a tunnel on the northern Gaza border.

Ten of his assailants, possibly all of them, were subsequently killed by a retaliatory strike.

The fact that the war is ongoing was clear to everyone at the funeral, with multiple public service announcements for everyone to take cover in case of a rocket attack playing throughout.

Michal’s emotions were high throughout but she rarely broke down, while Dolev’s parents, Eliyahu and Drorit, as well as other family members and attendees, broke down numerous times throughout the ceremony.

Michal spoke of her husband, asking, “how can I eulogize you when you always gave me the right words to say?” Openly holding back emotion to try to maintain decorum, Harel, who normally is not given to public emotion, said that “everything went silent when I heard” that Keidar had died.

Harel continued to say what an exemplary chief of staff Dolev had been for him when Harel was deputy chief of the IDF, adding, “I have no answer to this, only shock” and “a giant hole in my heart.”

One of Keidar’s close commanders, Col. Ofer Levi, apologized that Keidar’s “soldiers could not be here,” adding they are still on the front fighting to defend Israeli citizens.

Levi also let his guard down, and said with a shaky voice that “it is hard to imagine speaking to you in past tense and not about your brilliant future” as someone who would rise to the highest echelons of the IDF.

Keidar’s three children, Maya, Roi and Guy, did not appear to be present, but they were mentioned by all of the speakers.

Michal, in a film she produced a few years ago, interviewed her children at the time about the difficulties of growing up with a father who they only saw around once every two weeks due to his military service.

The ceremony included a range of mourning prayers and psalms by the IDF chief rabbi, an IDF cantor and Dolev’s father, Eliyahu, who broke into tears near the end.

Keidar’s aunt called his death “a bad movie.” Unfortunately, with fighting only increasing in Gaza, it is a movie that may not be over soon.

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