Lapid: Unity is the greatest revenge on killers

Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who is attending the funeral of slain yeshiva student Gil-ad Shaar in Talmon, says unity is the greatest revenge Israelis can have on the killers of Shaar and his two companions, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach, who were found dead north of Hebron yesterday.

“If we would punish our enemies, we have no greater punishment than them looking at us and seeing that there is nothing that can separate us,” Lapid said. “We will find the murderers and punish them, but the real revenge is the ability to bridge our differences.”

He adds that Shaar, like his companions, “could have been the child of any one of us, and therefore he is the child of all of us.”

Urging Israelis to find a “common language” rather than resorting to anger, hatred, division and competition, Lapid points out that none of the victims were soldiers who died “in the endless battle for this land.” Rather, they were all children.

He poignantly adds, “Burying a child is an unnatural act. Parents aren’t meant to bury their children. Grandparents aren’t meant to shed tears over their grandchildren’s graves.”

“When we bury adults, we bury memories,” Lapid says. “When we bury a child, we bury the life he’ll never have — we bury a wedding, the first cry of a baby, an entire Sabbath table that will never come to be.”