Peres: ‘We will miss you very much, Arik’

“Arik was a man of the land,” Peres continues, who defended Israel, sowed and reaped its bounty. “He never stopped looking forward to the day when its children would live in security, when its sons would return to their borders, and peace would visit the promised land.”

“Arik, you were one of a kind,” Peres says. “May you have true rest, you great leader… The ground whence you came will now embrace you with the large, warm arms of our nation’s history, and take you in as a man who contributed an unforgettable, historic chapter to her saga.”

Peres quotes a famous poem about the war dead by poet Natan Alterman: “As the nation arises / Torn at heart but still breathing / To receive its miracle, the only miracle….”

“We will miss you very much, Arik. May your memory be for a blessing.”