... and on the Bus, Part II

As I stood on the bus today, I heard a rather powerful conversation taking place in front of me. An older man with white hair and a black kippah stated, "That bombing at Cafe Hillel that took Alon Mizrahi and 6 others, remember?". The man next to him nodded, before being totally caught off guard by the man's next statement, "He's my son." As the old man continued to emotionally describe his departed son, I stood quietly, listening and paying my respects to a man who lost one of his most important assets. "He never had a chance to get married, to raise a family, to live," the old man continued, "They killed him before he had a chance to grow." His harrowing words reminded me of a similar statement in a speech I heard in Arad's cemetery during 2005's Memorial Day where one of the speakers described the pain of seeing saplings being ripped from the ground before they even had a chance to blossom into trees. Alon Mizrahi was only 22 when he died preventing a suicide bomber from entering Cafe Hillel on Emek Refaiim in Jerusalem ... Another name in what sadly seems like a never ending list of victims in our struggle to live on our land.