Israeli rabbis work around the clock — even on the Sabbath — to count the dead from Hamas attack

SITRIYA – Rarely do rabbis spend the Sabbath counting our bodies. But on Saturday, per week after Hamas militants blew simply previous Israel’s fortified safety fence and gunned down loads of Israelis — at track gala’s, of their houses, in vehicles whilst attempting to flee — Israel’s army rabbinate made an exception.

At Shura army base in central Israel, our bodies had been coming in sooner than the rabbis can determine them. Hundreds of squaddies, girls, and kids in frame luggage line cabinets of refrigerated vans, waiting for exam. Identification groups acquire on plastic stools reverse the vans to take smoke breaks between shifts. They put on heavy gasoline mask — the odor of demise is overwhelming.

“Generally, Jewish law says that you cannot break the Sabbath for a dead person,” stated Rabbi Israel Weiss, who helps lead the operation. “The exception is when a family is in doubt, and the death is so crippling that it may risk the family’s lives. Then, you must work on the Sabbath to identify the body and bring answers to the family.”

Now, the highest the nation can be offering the households of a few 1,300 folks killed through Hamas militants is ultimate affirmation that their family members are dead.

The procedure was once proceeding Sunday and may take months, staff stated. Some our bodies are so disfigured that they can’t be known. Each should go through DNA checking out, a job made tougher through the undeniable fact that the army does now not have a DNA database for civilians. Only part the civilians had been known to this point, rabbis stated.

Seeking the ultimate phrase on their family members, households throughout Israel have flocked to hospitals to give DNA samples in the hope that they are able to be matched to the our bodies at certainly one of a number of bases around the nation receiving the dead.

The circle of relatives of Maayan Mualem needs solutions. The remaining they heard, Maayan were shot in the again through Hamas warring parties who burst into the open box of the track competition she attended, gunning down partygoers in an open box. Her circle of relatives spent an entire day looking out Soroka Medical Center in southern Israel to to find her frame, most effective to arise brief.

“For 12 hours until midnight, we went department by department, bed by bed, and she wasn’t there,” stated Raz Mualem, Maayan’s brother.

Last week, the circle of relatives filed right into a police station out of doors of Tel Aviv to give DNA samples. They hope to obtain phrase from the rabbinate that this can be a fit.

“The state of Israel will put in any effort that is possible, money, resources, so that every fallen soldier and citizen will be recognized,” said Weiss. “Until we reach the point that no mother is left crying over the grave of her son or daughter, having any sort of doubt that it might not be them.”

Rabbis have now not labored on the Sabbath since 2005, stated Weiss, when the rabbinate disinterred graves from a cemetery in an Israeli agreement in Gaza that citizens evacuated as a part of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal at the time. Hamas gained Palestinian elections in 2006, and the following yr, it seized regulate of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority.

Nearly 20 years later, the militant team remains to be in energy in Gaza, and the rabbinate was once once more at work on the Sabbath.

Teams of reservists, some as younger as 23, work around the clock figuring out our bodies. Prior to the attack, some labored as dentists, some had been scholars, some labored at tech corporations. Now, they spend their days in white hazmat fits.

“The reservists go home at night and try to unsee what they have seen here,” stated Capt. Maayan, a 40-year-old dentist from Tel Aviv who works on a crew figuring out the our bodies of girls. Maayan, whose remaining identify may now not be revealed beneath army laws, stated that on certainly one of her shifts she unzipped a frame bag to to find certainly one of her former sufferers staring up at her.

“No one should have to see what we see here, and what we will never stop seeing,” she stated, beginning to cry.

The means of figuring out squaddies has long past extra temporarily, id groups stated. Soldiers give DNA samples at the get started in their carrier, making them more straightforward to determine. According to the army, 90% of dead squaddies — 265 our bodies — had been known. But the our bodies stay coming in.

“There are still so many bodies piled. It’s endless,” stated Senior Staff Sgt. Avigail, who’s 48 and from Tel Aviv and as soon as labored at the phone corporate. Her crew operates in shifts, 4 girls at a time. At the finish of the day, Avigail stated, her crew consults with psychologists and social staff to take a look at to grapple with the horrors of the day.

Her voice quivering, she described how workforce had determined now not to carry out the ritual cleaning of dead our bodies beneath Jewish legislation.

“We don’t perform the ritual on the people who were murdered,” she stated. “Anyone who died in this manner is already considered pure.”

Some of the our bodies had been introduced to Mount Herzl, Israel’s nationwide cemetery in Jerusalem. On Saturday night time, the website was once shrouded in a mist so thick it blurred streetlights. Still, the freshly dug graves had been visual, illuminated through harsh floodlights to lend a hand the army guard within sight stay shut watch.

In the morning, the digging would start once more. But for now, they sat hunched, fingers on their guns — younger squaddies protecting watch over the graves of younger squaddies.