Arnona grieves: Jerusalem neighborhood mourns residents killed by Hamas

Aerial view of neighborhoods: Hebron Road (C) crosses between the Talpiot and Arnona neighborhoods; Bethlehem Road (R) crosses Baka.

Mark Twain, or possibly late 19th-century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, is reported to have observed: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Whoever actually came up with that perspicacious notion knew what they were talking about. Numbers may provide the public with some idea of the general scale of a given state of affairs, but they conceal all the finer, fundamentally human details and proffer a sanitized clinical take on the factual lay of the land.

That, sadly, applies to our current predicament. As of February 12, IDF fatalities during Operation Swords of Iron stood at 566. That is in addition to the hundreds of Israelis and foreigners murdered at the Supernova music festival and in communities near the border with Gaza on Oct. 7.

That is not just 566 men and women whose lives were summarily cut short way ahead of time. That means 566 families, their friends, and neighbors who, to varying degrees, have had to deal with the trauma of a son, daughter, brother, sister, parent, partner, friend, or just a familiar face in the locale vanishing overnight.

Listening to the mourners of Arnona’s fallen IDF soldiers

That is certainly the sense I got when I went to the shiva house of the Shakuri family in Arnona earlier this week. That was five short, but seemingly endless, days after the news came through that Deputy Battalion Commander David Shakuri had been killed in Gaza. He is one of three soldiers from the area who have fallen in battle since Oct. 7; the two others are Zechariah Pesach Haber (more below) and Hanan Drori.

Drori, of the 551st Brigade, was seriously wounded in Gaza after being hit by an anti-tank missile in December; he succumbed to a fungal infection earlier this month. The fourth local, Aner Elyakim Shapiro – an unarmed off-duty soldier the Nahal Brigade and friend of captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin (also a local, taken at Supernova) – was killed while attending the Supernova festival. He saved many lives by fending off grenades in a bomb shelter before his death.

Walking near the US Consulate, in Arnona. (credit: FLASH90)

Walking near the US Consulate, in Arnona. (credit: FLASH90)

Shakuri was the eldest of seven children, born and bred in Arnona. His family owns the makolet on Ein Gedi Street and lives above the store. The shop is the quintessential grocer’s; the place where all the locals drop by, either to buy food or just for a chat. The business was founded by Shakuri’s grandfather, and the family has been the beating heart of the neighborhood ever since.

“He built the first house in Arnona in the 1950s,” Eli Shakuri, David’s uncle, tells me while we chat on the sidewalk in the soft, wintry sunshine. “People that come to our store, they are part of our family. They aren’t just customers. We are all together.”

I got a palpable sense of that while I stood out on the street talking to Eli, and earlier when David’s younger brother Guy and sister Yafit took a break from sitting with well-wishers in the living room upstairs to tell me about their big brother. “I want everyone to know about David,” says Guy. “He was so kind and generous. Everyone he met said that about him.”

This was clearly no ordinary shiva event. “This store is the anchor of the whole neighborhood,” Guy adds. “People come here and feel part of the place.” Our conversation was interrupted every couple of minutes as passersby, and others on their way upstairs, stopped to shake Guy’s and Yafit’s hand or give them a supportive hug. This tragedy hangs like a heavy pall over the whole area and will probably do so for some time to come.

AS A journalist, it is often a tricky business to approach mourners and lend a sympathetic ear without intruding as an outsider on the bereaved’s privacy. But Guy was eager to tell me about his brother.

“He helped our mother a lot, and he kept things running along harmonious tracks at home,” he says. “He was only three years older than me, but he was like a second father to all of us. There was once a big row between the siblings, and he just intervened. He said that anyone who shouts must be crazy,” Guy chuckles. “He said that we should honor our father and mother, in those very words. He managed to calm things down and care for the home.”

David kept that up from afar, too. “He sent my mother messages every single day from Gaza, to assure her he was OK. Somehow, he always managed to find a signal. That happened on the day he was killed too. He had cell phone reception an hour before that happened.”

Guy says his brother always put others’ needs ahead of his own. “He never talked about his own problems. No one knew if he had any issues. He was totally focused on helping others. His own wife never knew if he had any problems.”

That generosity of spirit pervaded his conduct in the army as well. “He was an officer, a deputy battalion commander, and could have eaten in the officers’ mess. But he always ate with his soldiers in their canteen.” It wasn’t just a matter of sitting and chowing down with them. David wanted his charges to feel at ease with him and to have a sense of mutual respect.

“He not only ate with them,” Guy continues. “It is customary for soldiers to stand up when a senior officer gets up. But David didn’t want to bother them with that, so he always stayed until everyone had gone, to save them that tedious business.”

There was more, much more, to Shakuri’s benevolence. Some of the tales were new to Guy and the rest of the family but, naturally, did not surprise them. “Lots of soldiers, including his liaison officer, have come to the shiva and told us heartwarming stories about David and how wonderful he was. They all say the same thing. For example, they were out in the field and there was a jerry can for drinking water. Everyone could drink regular tap water, but David had access to Neviot [mineral] water, so he gave the female soldiers the mineral water to drink. That was a small act but a wonderful gesture.”

Shakuri’s family members and the soldiers he served with on a daily basis were not the only ones who appreciated his thoughtfulness. Word of his consideration for others’ well-being spread higher up the military ladder. While I chatted with Guy, a general turned up to spend time with the mourners, and Mayor Moshe Lion was also spotted going in through the makolet. I was told that President Isaac Herzog had also visited earlier in the week.

THE WHOLE neighborhood appears to be in mourning for Shakuri. When I told passersby I was a journalist, everyone extolled David’s and the family’s virtues. “The makolet and the family are so important to Arnona,” was one comment. “Arnona wouldn’t be the same without this place,” was another. “David was such a sweet man, always helping out,” said a local who apparently knew Shakuri well.

Deborah Greniman, a neighbor, took the news of David’s death hard. “I have lived two buildings away from Shakuri’s makolet for 35 years and have been their faithful customer for that long. I did not know David Shakuri, except for vague memories of the little boy playing in the makolet. But his father, Sasson, seems to know everybody,” she says. She adds that she, like many others in the area, feels the Shakuris’ pain and is thankful for their presence in Arnona.

“The family lives over the shop – as their parents did – and Sasson has made it the beating heart of the neighborhood. He seems to anticipate the neighborhood people’s needs and wants almost before they know them, and he’s always ready with a smile and a word of greeting. I was shattered when I heard the news. I almost couldn’t believe it could be true. How could this happen – to them? But I’m sure David was the best there is because that’s what this family has always given.”

The cloud of grief settled over Arnona from the very start of the atrocities, when 22-year-old Staff Sgt. Aner Elyakim Shapiro was killed at the Supernova music festival while defending a group of festival-goers huddled in a doorless bomb shelter from grenades thrown by the terrorists.

Another local resident, 26-year-old Staff Sgt. Hanan Drori, died from an aggressive fungal infection at the Sheba Medical Center after sustaining severe wounds incurred by an anti-tank missile in December. Drori died on the same day as Shakuri.

THREE WEEKS before Shakuri fell, a neighbor, Zecharia Pesach Haber, 32, was killed in Gaza. Haber, who lived just around the corner from the Shakuri family, was born in America and made aliyah with his parents at the age of eight. He met his wife, New Jersey-born Talia, just two months after she moved here to stay. The couple had three children.

It was something of a whirlwind romance. “What impressed me about Zecharia from the very beginning was how emotionally intelligent he was,” Talia recalls. “On our first date, we went for a walk and he came out with the names of all these flowers. I don’t know how many men know the names of flowers.”

That sounds touching, and I learned that he was a man of abundant talents. “He knew many languages, and he learned them by himself,” she tells me. “Look behind you.” I turn around, and I see piles of language textbooks on, inter alia, German, Spanish, French, and Welsh. “His first language was French, and I know he learned Russian and Amharic in school,” Talia says. My lower jaw was already heading south.

“During our honeymoon [to Britain], Zecharia was able to read the signs in Welsh,” she says. Deciphering signs is, of course, far from being fluent in a language, but with less than 30% of the population of Wales conversant in the indigenous tongue, even that level of linguistic proficiency is pretty impressive for a US-born Israeli.

Zecharia was also a devoted husband and dad. “When he came home on a break from the army, he would always take over,” says Talia. “I never knew how tired he must have been. He took care of the house and the kids. He always said it was time for me to have a break.”

With the tragic event so fresh, one could have expected Talia to be in a very fragile state, but I met a surprisingly upbeat person who appears to be determined to connect to the positive side of life. Having three children under the age of six to care for, naturally means she can’t fall apart, but I got the impression that Talia has plenty of inner strength and courage.

Thankfully, she has a robust support group, with her mother-in-law living three floors above her, and she feels that people in the building, the neighborhood, and farther afield are always there for her. “The whole country has very much come together [during the current war]. You feel they are all here trying to help you, trying to help us. Zecharia felt for the country, and you feel the country recognizes it and it sustains you.”

Talia actually goes a step further than just clinging to life and feeding off the warmth and support around her. Despite having lost her husband less than a month earlier, she somehow maintains a sunny disposition and the drive to keep her show firmly on the road. She wants very much to spread the good, happy, word as far and wide as she possibly can.

“The article you are writing is going to be sad,” she tells me. “That is natural. But articles you see in the paper in general are either sad or angry. We don’t have happy, and I think papers have to take responsibility [for the harm] they cause by doing that. We need more happy.”

Amen to that.в–