‘Lebanon should burn for this,’ shouted a Druze radio host.
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
Amid the funeral services for 10 of the 12 Majdal Shams children killed by a Hezbollah rocket attack on Saturday, the entire community expressed grief and anger as they buried their loved ones.
Thousands gathered to pay their last respects to 10 of the children who died when a rocket hit a soccer field.
The victims were named as Alma Ayman Fakher Eldin, 11 Milad Muadad Alsha’ar, 10; Vinees Adham Alsafadi, 11; Iseel Nasha’at Ayoub, 12; Yazan Nayeif Abu Saleh, 12; Johnny Wadeea Ibrahim, 13; Ameer Rabeea Abu Saleh, 16; Naji Taher Alhalabi, 11; Fajer Laith Abu Saleh, 16; Hazem Akram Abu Saleh, 15; and Nathem Fakher Saeb, 16.
Although Hezbollah has denied it launched the rocket, investigations by the IDF and US officials have determined the terror group is responsible for the attack.
The 11th casualty was buried in Ein Keiny, and the 12th is missing and presumed to have been killed in the rocket attack.
All of the young people who died were between the ages of 10 and 20.
Local businesses were closed, and black flags were draped through the streets, and crowds accompanied the bodies in coffins to their final resting place.
Mowafaq Tarif, a spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel, expressed anger at Hezbollah for the deadly attack and urged a decisive retaliation.
“Any country interested in surviving cannot afford to allow its citizens and residents to be targeted over an extended period of time. We can’t rely on luck alone,” he said.
“Lebanon should burn for this,” shouted Samir Halabi, a 52-year-old radio host from Majdal Shams.
“The response should be 10 times the magnitude, they should be obliterated,” one local man, Zaki Amr, 29, said of Hezbollah.
Others expressed shock and grief rather than anger, and one man said, “I don’t know what to say, truly. I’m sorry,” as he wept.
Although many of the Druze are allied with Israel against Islamic terrorist groups and many serve in the IDF, a few of the mourners blamed Israel for not doing enough to protect them and hinted at discrimination.
The wife of a first responder said, “Look, we’re exposed here. We’re abandoned. It took an hour for the ambulances to come.”
However, she later added, “This is just anger talking. We feel the pain of our Jewish brothers and sisters.”
Amr, a first responder, said, “The tragedy was that the rocket hit the people as they were running to the shelter.”
Amr said he “worked like a robot, carrying bodies and wounded children to the side for evacuation.”
He recalled, “After I was done treating people, I clenched my fists, red with the victims’ blood, with uncontrollable anger.”