On Wednesday The Knesset held a discussion regarding the issue of adding the acronym Hy”d, which stands for Hashem yikom damo, to military gravestones. This comes after the Defense Ministry initially refused a request from the family of fallen soldier Cpt. Yisrael Yudkin to write the acronym on his gravestone.
Gallant’s answer was presented by Economy Minister Nir Barkat, as Gallant is currently in the US.
Barkat said that Minister Gallant has instructed the Public Council for the Commemoration of Soldiers to reexamine the request. Currently HY’D does not appear in the list of optional additions in the part of the gravestone meant to be uniform.
Professionals in the Defense Ministry offered the family to add the acronym to the part of the uniform part of the gravestone with the understanding that the addition expresses the family’s pain over the death of their loved one.
Currently the gravestone is blank, due to the Defense Ministry’s initial insistence not to give in to the family’s request.
Speaking to Channel 14, Yisrael’s mother, Tzipi, stated: “Because we are from Kfar Chabad, I immediately told the IDF that we want the burial and everything else according to our traditions. They told us, ‘We will do it and give you everything.’ I trusted them completely. We decided to bury him in Jerusalem, the Holy City because he fell as a holy person. My husband even wanted to bury him on the Mount of Olives, but this was too difficult for me, and the army representatives suggested Mount Herzl, so we decided to bury him there.”
Then they started discussions which led to the situation where Yudkin’s tombstone was placed on his grave without any inscription. “The IDF did not know what the Ministry of Defense required and as a haredi mother, I had demands of my own. I didn’t want the Gregorian date on the stone, but only the Jewish date. They agreed to that. Then I asked that the abbreviation Hy”d [May God avenge his blood” be engraved on his tombstone. This is not some kind of new concept. It is inscribed not only in Israel but on Jewish graves all over the world. Only the Jewish state forbids inscribing the acronym Hy”d on the gravestone of a Jewish soldier. It is incomprehensible.”
In an emotional moment, Tzipi Yudkin spoke about the possibility that the family might be forced to move their son’s grave to another cemetery due to this dispute: “This is a feasible option and it is hard to even say this, but it would be a real tragedy for the country if we had to remove him from Mount Herzl and take him to another holy place where we can engrave ‘May God avenge his blood’ on his tombstone. That would be the end of the State of Israel. For this, they will have to burn tires in the streets.”
{Matzav.com}
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