Some 300 mourners huddled under umbrellas in the steadily falling rain at Jerusalem’s ancient Mount of Olives cemetery on Wednesday night to lay to rest the newborn boy whose mother was shot Sunday night in a terror attack outside the town of Ofra.
The infant, who was given a ceremonial circumcision and named Amiad Yisrael (“my eternal nation Israel”) after his passing, was pronounced dead earlier in the day by doctors at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, after having been delivered by emergency Caesarean section at just 30 weeks gestation four days earlier.
At the funeral, the baby was wrapped in a traditional prayer shawl, and though he had lived just four days outside the womb, he was eulogized with tears and songs.
“You brought so much light,” sobbed the boy’s grandfather, Refael Ish-Ran. “And with all the light that you brought, we will extinguish their darkness,” he said, referring to the terrorist and his supporters in the Palestinian Authority.
In tears, Ish-Ran cried that the boy had “managed to unite the nation of Israel” in a way few others had in their much longer lifetimes.
Amiad Yisrael’s parents, Shira and Amichai Ish-Ran, were not present at the funeral, recovering from their injuries in hospital. The young parents were able to visit the newborn for the first time just hours before he passed away.
Shira Ish-Ran was standing with her husband, Amichai, at a bus stop outside the town of Ofra, north of Jerusalem, when a car pulled up and sprayed them and five other commuters with bullets and drove away.
Shira was shot in the lower abdomen and was evacuated to Shaare Zedek in critical condition. Amichai was shot in the legs and taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in moderate condition. For a couple of hours while Shira was in surgery for her injuries and to attempt to save Amiad, doctors were unsure whether Shira would survive.
Her family reported that her recovery has been nothing short of miraculous, and that the bullets missed all of her major organs.
“We’ve been informed that the IDF has gone after the terrorists and hit one of them,” Samaria Regional Council chairman Yossi Dagan said at the funeral. “But this is not enough.”
Dagan, whose council includes the town of Elon Moreh were the Ish-Rans live, called on the government to build new Jewish communities in response to the attack.
Immediately prior to the funeral, the Israel Defense Forces announced that it had killed Salih Omar Barghouti, who was suspected of carrying out the drive-by shooting attack. Additional investigations are underway to find and arrest additional accomplices.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his condolences prior to the funeral.
“Our heart is with Shira and Amichai after the passing of their 4-day-old baby that doesn’t even have a name,” Netanyahu told reporters, calling Amiad’s killers “despicable murderers—the most deviant criminals on earth.”
“We won’t let up until we find them and bring them to justice,” he said.