Kibbutz Neighbors, Classmates Killed Before Cease-Fire Begins
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MAAYAN BARUCH, Israel — Heran Lev and Dan Broir grew up on neighboring kibbutzim in northern Israel, went to high school together, and, as members of the same tank crew fighting in Lebanon, died together.
They were killed Saturday on the deadliest day yet for Israel in the month-long conflict, dying on the eve of a formal cease-fire.
“I wish he will be the last one,” Lev’s father, Gabriel, said yesterday at his home on this kibbutz, even as the day brought additional Israeli casualties.”I wish it will be the end. But if I am a realist I must say it will never end.”
The tragic irony of dying even as politicians agreed to a cease-fire scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. Monday was diluted only by bitter skepticism that the conflict is not really over.
Gabriel Lev last saw his son a week ago. The 20-year-old sergeant with a tank regiment was at a staging position on the Israeli side of the border, just a few miles from the kibbutz, and called home. The Lev family cooked a pot full of rice and chicken and took it up to him.
The next day, he was able to come home for a few hours. He brought his laundry, and that of his entire company.
As the Lev family gathered yesterday to absorb the news, seated in plastic chairs in their front yard, a Hezbollah rocket slammed into a kibbutz garden about 90 yards away. The mourners scattered, gathering themselves inside the Lev living room. The blast ripped apart the blinds on the back windows of the house and burned a wide path in nearby grass.
Mr. Lev said his son, who was doing duty in the West Bank when the war in Lebanon erupted, was not afraid to fight and wanted to do something to defend his kibbutz.
His regiment was the same unit his mother served in.
“She fought to get him in the same unit, and now she is crying about it,” one of the army officers who notified the Lev family of their son’s death, Captain Dror Schafer, said.
In the Israeli tradition, Heran Lev’s commander will visit the family and describe how the fatal battle unfolded — once he emerges from Lebanon.
[Among the dead soldiers this weekend was Staff Sergeant Uri Grossman, the 20-year-old son of renowned Israeli novelist and peace activist David Grossman, the Associated Press reported yesterday. He was killed by an antitank missile Saturday, the army said yesterday.]
