Amir

I wanted to share with you an e-mail my baby brother (30 years old) sent to me and other family members ... the date is April 22nd 2007 .. remembrance day .. a very difficult day for us all .. and he wrote ....

I remembered that at graduate day in hi-school one of my friends said that the next time we will all meet will be for one of three reasons a reunion (which never happened), remembrance day ceremony at school or a funeral. In 1994 6 month later a class mate a friend died and we all met for the first time since graduation.

Amir was one of the members of a team assigned to secure beit-leed junction, a pick-up point where paratroopers gathered after returning from a weekend at home. that day a bomb detonated in the only kiosk at the junction killing instantly 19 soldiers. Amir and his team started carrying out the injured 3 days later a female survivor will tell his parents that Amir carried her out of the ruins, as he laid her down she asked him to stay with her because she was scared. " I must run back in and help the other injured" he replied "my name is Amir and once everybody is safe i promise to come back and be by your side" he ran in as a second bomb was detonated and he never returned.

Six days earlier was the last time I saw him, I arrived at sanur training camp where he was and I had 3 hours to kill before leaving for my sky diving course. I couldn't pass the opportunity of waking him up in the middle of the night for a friendly conversation, quite frankly I was excited and I wanted to brag. As i woke him up at 4a.m i felt a bit guilty for ruining his sleep, that precious 4 hours of sleep you so badly need during training. but the moment i saw his smile my fears were gone and we started talking like two friends that haven't seen each other for years. I did most of the talking, telling him how great it will be to jump out of a plain and that in four month it will be him jumping (since he joined the army in November and I did in august), I went on and on till I had to leave. after the funeral as I approached his mom she asked me if I am Yuval who dropped by Amir in the middle of the night last week. she continued to tell me that he just received a 3 week detention that day, "he called us to say everything will be alright he spoke about you and how he is looking forward to sky diving, you really cheered him up, he was excited" that was his last conversation with his mom.

In the next four years I've attended 6 more funerals of fellow soldiers, 4 who died in combat, 1 in a training accident and the last one suicide. I was already a civilian just came back from my trip in north and south America, I believe he left a letter explaining that after his best friend died in the Gaza strip he just couldn't bare to go through it for the second time. he was Amir's younger brother. his parents didn't want any of the friends to come by after the funeral. only family we were told........

all Israelis have their own personal memory probably most have a few, it is remembrance day today and this memory was mine.