Master Sgt. Zidan Saif (Israeli Police via jpost.com)
Today, a five-month old baby looked on as thousands of people put to rest the father that she will never know. Yet, the heroic acts of Master Sgt. Zidan Saif sent us a message that will forever be remembered by Israel and the Jewish community.
Saif is a Druze man, a part of 150,000 Druze people that live in Israel and adhere to a very inclosed sect of Islam. Druze people are well known in Israeli society for their loyalty to whichever country they live in and many Druze youth go on to serve in high ranking positions in the Israeli Army.
But, that does not explain why Israeli political leaders, clergymen of all of Israel’s three major faiths, and regular citizens ranging from the most secular to the most religious chose to attend Zidan Saif’s funeral today. The funeral was a stark reminder of the Jewish State’s democratic character.
Saif was one of two police officers who first responded to the terrorist attack in Har Nof, a neighborhood of Jerusalem, on Tuesday. As soon as they arrived, the terrorists began a gunfight in which Saif was shot in the head, while the other officer also sustained serious wounds. The thirty year old Saif was rushed to the hospital, where he later died. The account of one medical responder was that the wounded Saif managed to wave the EMTs towards an entrance to the synagogue that was sure to be secure.
Just a few minutes earlier, when Saif began speeding towards the synagogue to respond to the attack, he was not thinking of who the victims would be. The fact that they were Ultra-Orthodox Chasidic Jews had no impact on his decision to take action. Saif has no religious connection to these Chasidic Jews, but his responsibility–that he so heroically carried out–was to protect the victims as they were both citizens of the same country.
Many of Israel’s critics claim that its Jewish nature makes Israel a theocracy, in which those who are not Jewish are subject to discrimination. Zidan Saif’s actions yesterday must serve as a reminder to all of us that the Jewish State is also a democratic state, in which diverse ethnic and religious groups are able to co-exist and provide one another with the protection to live freely.
Any Israeli police officer or soldier would have responded to such an attack on Israeli people in the same way, regardless if it was in a church, mosque, or synagogue. That is their job. They are members of the Israeli Defense Forces, in which they collectively exercise the democratic right of defending the civilians that live within their state.
Remember that today, an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman paid for free buses to take Jewish youth from a Haredi neighborhood of Jerusalem to the Druze village of Kfar Yanouch in northern Israel. Today, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, the Chairman of the Council of Muslim Leaders, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Chairman of the Druze Religious Council all stood side by side paying their respect to Zidan Saif. Israeli President Reuben Rivlin, companies of Israeli police officers and soldiers, and Druze, Jews, Christians, and Muslims wept together as they honored the heroism of one of their fellow Israelis.
And I, as someone who cares for the democracy that is the Jewish State, felt the protection today of Zidan Saif.
Sources and Further Reading
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