Benyamin Netanyahu directly honored him when he spoke to Antony Blinken. Speaking to the US Secretary of State, the Prime Minister mentioned the name of Lieutenant Pedayà Menachem Mark, who was killed in combat in Gaza on October 31 and who enters the pantheon of heroes of Israel, especially the far-right part of the country.
Mark died at the age of 22 while commander of his unit in the Tzabar Battalion of the Givati Brigade, the spearhead of the Israeli offensive in Gaza. Pedayà, which means “saved by God” in Hebrew, was born in the Jewish settlement of Othniel in the West Bank and was among the group of religious nationalists seen by many in Israel, particularly on the Left. But his death moved everyone in a nation grappling with its most difficult test since its founding in 1948.
There is also a very human reason: the young lieutenant was the son of Rabbi Michael Mark, who was killed in a Palestinian attack while both were visiting relatives in Jerusalem. The then 15-year-old teenager miraculously saved himself from the 29 bullets fired at the car, which hit the entire family and also injured his mother, but not him.
Three years after the attack, his brother Shlomi, who worked in the Prime Minister’s Office (apparently as a cover for his real job with the Shin Bet, the internal security service), was killed in a car accident. Then another family tragedy struck when his cousin Elhannan Kalmanson was killed in the Hamas massacre on kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip on October 7. Confirmation of the death with recognition of the body arrived after two weeks, but Pedayà did not appear at the funeral. He was already fighting in the strip. In the note sent on the occasion of the funeral, he had written: “My dear family, these are days of great challenge for our people and especially for our family. But we are strong! The people of Israel are strong, the army is strong. We should delete them.”
Pedayah’s funeral took place two days ago in Jerusalem and was also attended by former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, who was a cousin of Rabbi Mark. The young lieutenant was buried next to his father, Michael. And Netanyahu — who met the young lieutenant — wanted to keep his memory alive today by telling Blinken his story.
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