Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu traveled to Efrat on Sunday to be menachem avel the Dee family for the loss of the mother of the family Lucy, h’yd and the daughters Maya and Rina, h’yd, who were shot by terrorists on Chol Hamoed Pesach.
Netanyahu heard from the father of the family, Rabbi Leo Dee, about the story of their aliyah to Israel. Rabbi Dee said that he knows that if his late wife had been asked about it, she would have said that she had no regrets about moving to Israel.
Netanyahu responded that “unfortunately ‘the Land of Israel is acquired with suffering.’ Now your wife and daughters will live inside you.”
The youngest daughter, Tali, asked Netanyahu how he dealt with the loss of his brother Yoni in 1976.
Netanyahu replied that at first he thought life was over and when he was told during the shiva that there is life after bereavement he refused to believe it. But they were right and he later realized that it is possible to live alongside loss.
He added: “The pain you feel now will remain for the rest of your life, but it will not be of such intensity.”
Netanyahu was accompanied on the visit by his chief of staff Tzachi Braverman, his military secretary Maj.-Gen. Avi Gil and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)