Syosset (United States) (AFP) – Hundreds of people paid an emotional tribute to a young US-Israeli soldier killed in the October 7 attack by Hamas and whose death was only confirmed Monday. People cried and embraced Tuesday at a packed Jewish community center in Syosset, on Long Island to the east of New York, as they remembered Omer Neutra, who was born in New York and emigrated to Israel, eventually joining the army. He died at age 21.
“How do you speak about your son that you’ve been fighting for 14 months, hoping, praying he survived the most horrible conditions on earth, and yet, you won’t get to see him?” his distraught father Ronen Neutra said at a memorial ceremony attended by Governor Kathy Hochul. “And then one moment, one knock on the door, and it’s all over. You have to internalize you will never see him again,” said Neutra, standing with his wife Orna and his other son, Daniel. The mother also spoke of her pain. “Now things are clear, but not as we hoped, and your void — a big hole in my stomach,” she said.
The Israeli army announced Monday that Neutra died in the Hamas attack on Israel and that his body had been held in Gaza since then and is still there. President Joe Biden said Monday he was “devastated and outraged” by the death of the young soldier, whose body was held while his family and the authorities had presumed he was being held hostage.
On October 11 of last year, as New York saw dueling demonstrations in favor of Israel and the Palestinians, Orna Neutra told a rally her son was alive and she would be reunited with him soon. That November, the parents of the soldier told AFP they were living in a “parallel universe” and counting on help from Biden, who had met with families of US hostages in Gaza. Until Monday, Neutra’s family thought he had been abducted and taken with other soldiers across the border into Gaza.
© 2024 AFP
