What a Bereaved Father, a Historian of Israel, Believes after 100 Days of War

On Oct.

7, Hamas militants stormed the home of Deborah and Shlomi Mathias in Kibbutz Holit in southern Israel, blowing down the door of their reinforced safe room and killing their daughter and son-in-law, as well as their 16-year-old son.

But instead of burying them in their home community, the family opted to bury them in a cemetery in southern Israel, WPR reports.

Instead, their three children inscribed their parents' gravestones with musical notes: the opening bars of Brit Olam, or "Everlasting Covenant," a classic Israeli love song that Deborah, who went by the Hebrew name Shahar, had sung with Shlomi at their own wedding.

"It was the children who decided that they would not put on their parents' gravestone what some other people have done," says Ilan Troen, an American-Israeli historian and father of the Mathias.

"'may God avenge their blood.' They wanted nothing of that."

Instead, their three children inscribed the gravestones with musical notes: the opening bars of Brit Olam, or "Everlasting Covenant," a classic Israeli love song that Deborah, who went by the Hebrew name Shahar, had sung with Shlomi at their own wedding.

"It

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