Mourning with Majdal Shams

July 31, 2024

by: Ilse Strauss

Wednesday, 31 July 2024 | There’s a tangible atmosphere that settles over a community in the aftermath of tragedy. It’s like the anguish turns palpable, physical, to settle into nooks and crannies so that even perfect strangers passing through stagger under the weight.

Such is the atmosphere in Majdal Shams

Late Saturday afternoon, the Druze village nestled into the foothills of Mount Hermon—a stone’s throw away from Israel’s northern border with Syria and Lebanon—was plunged into grief when a missile slammed into a soccer field teeming with kids. Twelve children—the oldest 16 and the youngest 10—were killed. More than 40 children were injured, some critically.

Majdal Shams is a small, tight-knit community of 12,000 inhabitants. This means that over the past two days, a number of families buried more than one family member.

I arrived in Majdal Shams just shy of 72 hours after the attack to find the soccer field a hub of activity. Friends and family come and go, huddling close for comfort as they weep. Israelis who have never met the victims arrive from across the country to show their love and solidarity. And then there’s us, the press, there to bear witness.

Stepping onto the soccer field feels like treading on hallowed ground. A scorched crater marks the point where the missile tore through a fence and slammed into the side of the field. The bomb shelter stands less than 3 meters (10 ft.) away, pockmarked by shrapnel. This is where the children were headed. Electric bikes and scooters still lie discarded where their owners dropped them in their haste before that fateful soccer game on Saturday. And then, next to the point of impact, twelve soccer balls; twelve wreaths bearing twelve names; and twelve pictures of twelve smiling faces.

A teenager sits cross-legged on the grass staring up at the makeshift memorial, angrily swiping at errant tears. Three young girls stand weeping by his side, each clutching a soccer shirt. The shirts belonged to their friend, Tena, 14, tells me, pointing to a picture of one of the smiling faces. I know the face. It belonged to Jafara Ibrahim, 11, who was classified as missing in the aftermath of the attack because he couldn’t be located among the deceased or the wounded. It was only later after sifting through the debris and remains that authorities concluded that the force of the missile obliterated Ibrahim’s body.

“The missile came from there,” Tena continues, pointing in the direction of neighboring Lebanon. “I hate Hezbollah,” she adds.

Hezbollah—often referred to as a branch of Tehran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—has indeed been raining down missiles on northern Israel for the past 10 months. The Iranian terror proxy announced on October 8, the day after the October 7 massacre by fellow Iranian terror proxy Hamas, that it would join the fight against Israel and has since launched nearly 4,000 missiles, rockets and suicide drones on the Jewish state. Apart from Majdal Sham’s children, 25 civilians and 18 soldiers and reservists have been killed. Some 200 km2 (77 square miles) of land have been burned or destroyed. As a result, between 80,000 and 100,000 Israelis have been evacuated and displaced, leaving some areas in northern Israel deserted.

Throughout the 10 months, Hezbollah has proudly claimed the attacks. In fact, on Saturday—shortly after the missile struck the soccer field—the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Mayadeen network reported that the terror group had launched a barrage of 100 missiles at Israel. Yet then reports of carnage began to surface. And this time, the victims were not Jewish. In fact, they were Druze children. Just like that, Hezbollah backtracked, offering a rare denial of any responsibility for the attack.

The renunciation carried little weight though. Israel presented fragments of the rocket, showing it to be an Iranian-made Falaq-1 missile with a warhead of 53 kilograms (117 lbs.) and a range of 10 kilometers (6.2 mi.), and with Hezbollah the only recipient of Iranian-produced munitions in the vicinity, the conclusion is simple.

Israel has the “irrefutable proof” of the terror group’s guilt, Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer told the press yesterday afternoon. Jerusalem knows that the missile was fired at 6:18 p.m., can pinpoint the launch site and already identified the mastermind behind the attack.

The United States agrees with Israel’s assessment. So do independent experts. Hezbollah has the blood of Majdal Shams’s children on their hands.

Yet ultimately, the 12 children from the tiny Druze village in the foothills of Mount Hermon might be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Given the incessant bombardment of northern Israel over the past 10 months, this tragedy was something that Israel knew could happen, but prayed wouldn’t.

“We are a country that hates war,” Mencer said. “We will do everything possible to avoid war. Sometimes we’ve waited far too long. If anything, that’s one of our faults.”

“This is not a sustainable reality,” he continued. “We don’t see what happens next as a response. That’s very much how the media sees it, but we see it as defense. We literally have no choice. There is no scenario that we can allow our people to be killed in this way.”

“The government has a responsibility to ensure that Hezbollah is pushed back, one way or another. Obviously, we prefer diplomacy over other means. So we’ll always give diplomacy a chance. It is in Israel’s DNA to try and find a peaceful resolution first.”

We leave Majdal Shams shortly before sunset, seemingly carrying the palpable sense of grief home with us.

An hour later, the first reports start to trickle in. Israel’s exacting of the heavy price for the murder of her children had begun. Fu’ad Shukr “Sayyid Muhsan”—Hezbollah’s most senior military commander, the architect of the terror attacks on Israel since October 8 and the man responsible for the 12 murdered children on a soccer field in Majdal Shams—was neutralized in Beirut. And Jerusalem took responsibility.

This morning, we awoke to the news that Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was neutralized in a rocket strike in the heart of Tehran. Nobody took responsibility.

Their deaths will not undo October 7, the ensuing war in Gaza, the civilian casualties, the suffering or the mourning families in Majdal Shams. But hopefully, their absence will mean less of the same in future.

Posted on July 31, 2024

Source: (Bridges for Peace, July 31, 2024)

Photo Credit: Ilse Strauss/bridgesforpeace.com