A Promising Young Life Prematurely Committed to Sand 

by Steven Erlanger
Holon Journal
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/world/middleeast/15funeral.html

Holon, Israel, May 14 - They buried Lior Anidzar on Sunday. 
He was 26. His family and friends, and his new wife, put him in the 
sand of this southern suburb of Tel Aviv, then keened over his grave. 
His mother, Yvonne, fainted and was taken away in a wheelchair.

Lior Anidzar worked in a garage, for a dealer of car parts. He was 
a gregarious young man, and he wanted to open a restaurant of 
his own.

He was in the north on April 17, during the Passover holiday, 
but then stopped by the shop near the old Tel Aviv bus station 
where his wife, Maya, worked. They had been married two weeks, 
and had lived in their new apartment here for four days.

He wanted to take her to lunch, she said, but she was busy and 
not hungry. He went to the Rosh Hair restaurant, a working-class 
place of falafel and shwarma, the Arabic foods, eaten in pita bread, 
that Israelis have adopted as their own.

Then Sami Salim Khamad, himself only 21, from Jenin, in the 
occupied West Bank, walked into the restaurant and blew himself up 
on behalf of a Palestinian militant group called Islamic Jihad. 
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the killing 
of civilians, but the new Palestinian government of Hamas defended 
it as a legitimate act of resistance to Israeli occupation.

"I give myself," Mr. Khamad said in the video issued by the militant 
group after the bombing, "for the sake of God."

God seemed distant that day to Lior Anidzar and 10 others who 
were killed in the bombing. More than 65 people were wounded. 
Mr. Anidzar, with internal injuries and serious burns, but young and 
strong, held on for a month. He died early on Saturday.

"It's been a horrible month, full of ups and downs," said his brother, 
David, 35, known as Dudu. "I like to think we had him for another 
month." He added: "And then he did say goodbye. He opened 
his eyes two weeks ago, and he said goodbye to us with his eyes."

Even as his family and friends gathered on Sunday afternoon for 
the funeral, there was news, whispered among family members 
and the rabbi, that Daniel Wultz, a 16-year-old tourist from Florida 
who had been eating in the same restaurant with his father, 
was the 11th victim of that bombing to die. 

Daniel's father, Yekutiel, called Tuly, was lightly wounded, but 
Daniel had severe internal injuries, and his aorta was torn. 
More than 40 of his classmates at the David Posnack Hebrew 
Day School recently came to Israel on a class trip and visited the 
hospital where he lay to pray for his recovery. His body will be 
flown home to Weston, Fla., for burial on Monday.

David Anidzar said the two families had grown close. "We tried to 
encourage them, and they tried to encourage us," he said. 
For Maya, "it was love at first sight," said Drora Shimony, a friend 
of Maya's family, the Halfons. Lior Anidzar and Maya Halfon dated 
for eight months, then decided to marry. At the traditional "henna" 
engagement ceremony, the couple, two Israelis of North African 
descent, were rapturous, Ms. Shimony said.

"I never knew he had so many friends," David Anidzar said Sunday. 
"He was a naughty guy, and loved to party. I didn't know how he 
was going to pay for so many people."

They were all here again on Sunday, at the cemetery - fit young 
men, some in military uniform, most in T-shirts and jeans, some 
carrying motorcycle helmets, their hair slicked back, under their 
skullcaps, eyes hidden by sunglasses.

Maya has not picked up the wedding pictures yet, the family said, 
and she has stopped eating. In a black shirt and trousers, 
she looked terribly thin and lost, as her family hovered around her.

Lior Anidzar's sister, Dalia Amar, is six months pregnant. She said 
she had been depressed about the pregnancy. "It was unplanned, 
I was unhappy," she said. "Lior said, 'Are you crazy? You're 
depressed? You should be delighted!' "

She will name the baby Lior, she said. The name, common for 
either sex, means light. Asked what she hoped for the child, 
she said, "That he will be born in peace and security, and 
not be afraid all the time."

At the funeral, the former chief rabbi of Israel and now chief rabbi 
of Tel Aviv, Israel Meir Lau, said Lior Anidzar "had fought for his life, 
and fought for his bride," and the mourners wailed, and "now he's 
gone to the gates of Heaven, and that's a separation forever." 
Here Rabbi Lau himself began to cry, and said, "A father saying 
Kaddish," the prayer for the dead, "for his son!"

Then he shouted, "Who are these savages who do these things, 
and no one takes the hand outstretched for peace?" He stopped, 
then said: "Heaven is not for such people. For what do they give 
their lives? To kill innocents? This is religion? No, this is a 
distortion of all mercy and all religious feeling, and I want the 
Muslim clerics to tell the truth, that murder doesn't bring paradise."

The new health minister of Israel, Yaakov Ben-Yizri, intoned, 
"The people of Israel pay a heavy price, to hold onto our lives and 
our country." He added: "We won't just take it and be silent. 
We have a strong army. We have no choice: to see it, and hit them 
a real shock." Lior Anidzar's friend Alon said, "How did we get to 
this place?" Then he broke down: "We'll never forget you, Lior, Lior. 
We all loved you. It's hard to separate ourselves from you, 
Lior, Lior, Lior!"

The Hebrew word for sand is hol, and in this poor town of Holon, 
the cemetery, too, is sun-blasted sand, broken by headstones. 

They brought Lior Anidzar out in a shroud, a prayer shawl and 
an Israeli flag, with no coffin, in the Israeli way, and mourners 
screamed as they put him into the sand.

His sister, Dalia, leaned down, rubbing her belly, then kissed a 
small stone and put it among the wreaths of flowers from the 
state and the city and the garage where he worked. Then those 
fit young men in stylish T-shirts took turns shoveling sand into 
the grave of their friend, while tears ran beneath their sunglasses.