{"id":10801,"date":"2023-10-28T13:46:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T13:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/28\/you-get-home-and-then-start-crying-israels-body-collectors-encounter-horrors-beyond-their-worst-nightmares\/"},"modified":"2023-10-28T13:46:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T13:46:32","slug":"you-get-home-and-then-start-crying-israels-body-collectors-encounter-horrors-beyond-their-worst-nightmares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/28\/you-get-home-and-then-start-crying-israels-body-collectors-encounter-horrors-beyond-their-worst-nightmares\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You get home and then start crying\u2019: Israel\u2019s body collectors encounter horrors beyond their worst nightmares"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Note:<\/em><\/strong> The following story includes graphic material. Audience discretion is advised.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yanir Ishay has thrown away three boxes of cigarettes in the past two weeks. <\/p>\n

He said he thought he could smell death on them, having carried the packets in his pockets while collecting human remains from the sites of Hamas\u2019 terror attack in southern Israel. Then his wife told him they were brand new \u2014 he\u2019d just bought them. <\/p>\n

Ishay is one of 120 volunteers \u2013 all of them men \u2013 working with ZAKA, a religious search and rescue organization, to recover the bodies of people killed near the Israel-Gaza perimeter by Hamas militants on October 7. Israeli authorities say more than 1,400 people were killed in the attack. <\/p>\n

In response, Israel declared war on Hamas, pounding Gaza with airstrikes that have killed more than 6,850 Palestinians, according to information published by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawn from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. <\/p>\n

Weeks on, as the war continues to rage, ZAKA volunteers are still collecting remains. <\/p>\n

ZAKA\u00a0has long worked in Israel and around the world, responding to terror attacks, accidents and disasters. Most of its members are deeply religious orthodox Jewish men and their mission is driven by the desire to ensure everyone, no matter what the circumstances of their death, can get a proper Jewish burial. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that the respect for the dead is no less important \u2013 and sometimes more important \u2013 than the respect for the living,\u201d Elmalih said. \u201cWe know how significant the idea of burying the dead is because God himself was involved in the burial of Moses.\u201d <\/p>\n

On Friday morning, Elmalih was working at a cemetery in Ashdod, a city about 20 miles north of the Gaza Strip. A row of freshly dug graves in the burial grounds gets longer and longer each day, as more victims are identified and laid to rest. The cemetery has received so many bodies in the past two weeks that Elmalih needed to bring in extra refrigerated storage. <\/p>\n

He was preparing yet another funeral when Yossi Landau, one of ZAKA\u2019s founding members, came by to say hello and drop off a care package. They spent a few minutes chatting, then gave each other a hug. <\/p>\n

Landau, chief of the group\u2019s southern command, says he tries to provide emotional support for his men, but the trauma cuts deep and there is only so much he can do to help. <\/p>\n

The aftermath of the attack is so gruesome that only the most experienced ZAKA volunteers are allowed to take part in body collection. <\/p>\n

And even for them, it is often too much. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can cry and everybody will understand. It\u2019s not stuff that I want to talk about and with these guys, I don\u2019t need to talk. We understand each other,\u201d Eli Landau said. <\/p>\n

On Friday, he and other ZAKA volunteers were combing through homes in Be\u2019eri for the second time, finding more victims and collecting remains left behind during their first visit. <\/p>\n

Jewish tradition requires the body to be buried in its entirety, which means the volunteers painstakingly search sites for even the smallest fragments of the victims\u2019 remains and traces of blood. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to collect the whole body. Even the blood that has left the body. That\u2019s why the work is not done yet. We\u2019re going to go back to each and every community to clean everything, all the blood, so it can be buried,\u201d Elmalih explained. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a task that is becoming more and more difficult as time goes by. \u201cThese volunteers, they are exposed to the most difficult parts of the war. They are getting to the scenes, smelling the smells, seeing the horrific sights,\u201d Elmalih added. <\/p>\n

As ZAKA volunteers worked in Be\u2019eri, several busloads of foreign journalists arrived, escorted by the IDF. Yossi Landau stood in front of them, repeating over and over again what he saw when he first got there, answering questions, occasionally pausing to collect himself. He said he has made it his mission to spread the message. <\/p>\n

Eli, his son, watched from afar, crying. \u201cI don\u2019t know why is he doing what he is doing, talking about this again and again and again. He is going to lose his mind. It\u2019s not healthy for him, it cannot be good for any soul,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

ZAKA volunteers Yanir Ishay, Yitzhak Ben-Shibrit and his son Aharon spent much of their Sunday working just a few hundred feet from the Gaza border fence, trying to recover the remains of people who were killed there. <\/p>\n

The job is dangerous \u2013 physically and mentally. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe mental side is worse though,\u201d Ishay said. \u201cWhen you die, you die, there\u2019s nothing after that. It\u2019s different with your mind,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Ishay said he trusts his fellow volunteers completely \u2013 not just when they are dealing with a difficult scene, but also when they tell him it\u2019s time to step away. Last week, he took a day off after spending his birthday collecting the dead. It was too much, he said. <\/p>\n

Most ZAKA volunteers say that they haven\u2019t begun to process the trauma, and when they can step away, they don\u2019t want to think. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe disconnect ourselves from the world. You come to the field, you start working and nothing else matters. You get home and then start crying,\u201d Yitzhak Ben-Shibrit said. <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: The following story includes graphic material. Audience discretion is advised. Yanir Ishay has thrown away three boxes of cigarettes in the past two weeks. He said he thought he could smell death on them, having carried the packets in his pockets while collecting human remains from the sites of Hamas\u2019 terror attack in <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10801","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}