Stunned and frustrated.

[ambitious_wench]

yonmei added this bit of tragedy to her live journal recently. I thought it deserved a wider audience.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,500930,00.html

Immigrants lose hope as they bury children

Special report: Israel and the Middle East

Russians feel robbed of a future in Israel after bombing



Suzanne Goldenberg in Tel Aviv
Monday June 4, 2001
The Guardian


Yelena and Yulia Nelimov were teenage girls consumed by teenage ambitions: to dress nicely, to have a good time, and to spend as many weekends as possible at a seafront disco that was a magnet for young immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Yesterday, on the day nine graves were dug for nine consecutive funerals at a cemetery north of Tel Aviv, dazed friends and relatives eulogised the extraordinary closeness of the sisters - Yelena, 18, and Yulia, 16, - who were among the 19 young Israelis killed by the suicide bomb attack on Friday night.

"They spent all their time together," said Marina Shniper, 15, their cousin, who sometimes used to tag along. "They loved life so much. I never saw them cry; they were always laughing."

But when the twin coffins draped in the Israeli flag were lowered into the ground there were screams of anguish as the Nelimovs' one remaining child, Alexei, was coaxed into reciting the unfamiliar prayer for the dead.

The girls were regulars at the Water World disco on the Tel Aviv seafront. The disco, which played Russian pop songs in the heart of Tel Aviv, symbolised the existence of these young Russian immigrants straddling the boundaries of adulthood and mainstream Israeli life.

Almost all those killed in the attack were from the former Soviet Union, members of an immigrant community vastly increased in the past 10 years to account for 1m of Israel's 6.3m citizens.

Even before the bombing, the Palestinian uprising had claimed a disproportionate share of immigrants from this community, but this latest tragedy was too much too bear.

"I was in the Russian army, in the special forces, and I saw my comrades wounded. I know what that means," the Nelimovs' uncle, Vladimir Shniper, said. "But that was the army. When it happens to children, there are no words to describe the horror."

Many at Yarkon cemetery yesterday said they were no longer sure their future lay in their adopted homeland.

"Now that I have seen what is happening here I have decided to leave for Canada," said Yuri Poltialov, 21. "I don't see that we have a future here; this country has been here for more than 50 years, and all it has seen is war."

Arriving here as children with the promise of a better life and greater security, the young Russian immigrants watched their parents rebuild their lives from scratch, toiling at menial jobs, while the younger generation struggled to fit in.

Like many of the dead, the Nelimovs were raised by a single parent: their father, who is not Jewish, stayed behind in Russia when the girls emigrated with their younger brother, mother, and grandmother six years ago.

They went the same secondary school in Tel Aviv. "Today I am at my fourth funeral," the principal, Avraham Benvinisti, said, "and there are more to come."

Only minutes earlier he had stood over the grave of another pupil, Irina Nepomniashy, who arrived from Tashkent four years ago and was in the business stream at the Shevah-Mofet school.

Friends say she was determined to make something of her life, to rise above the conditions that trapped her father in a factory job paying less than £500 a month.

But her death brought an added cruelty. She was buried away from the other teenagers, shunned by the religious authorities because they did not consider her ritually Jewish.

Her grave, heaped with bouquets and small memorial candles, stands in a cluster of oleander bushes, isolated even from the section of the graveyard reserved for the unknown dead, because the religious authorities only recognise Jews born of Jewish mothers, and Irina's mother, Raisa, is a Muslim.

In the throes of their grief the Nepomniashy family did not have the reserves of strength to protest at the insult. They merely gave in to quiet grumbling after Raisa was carried from her only daughter's grave in the arms of two friends.

A cousin, Alexander Nepomniashy, said the justice minister, Meir Shitreet, had promised the family that Irina would be buried with her classmates, but when they arrived at the cemetery other arrangements had been made.

"She lived here with everybody together, so she should have been buried with everyone together," Mr Nepomniashy said. "As I see it now, Israel never really accepted her because it would not let her be buried like everybody else."

They can go to school together, they can die together at the hands of a religious zealot, but they cannot be placed in the ground beside eath other because of irrational religious belief.

They are all crazy, they are all insane, they are all mad in both senses of the word, and it's the innocents who suffer. The Israelis and the Palestinians who perpetrate this hideous insanity make me ashamed of being human.

Comments

[texas-tiger.livejournal.com]

Amen.