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© St. Petersburg Times, published April 16, 2002
JERUSALEM -- In 1957, a Jew named Yosef Shemesh moved from his native Afghanistan to the young nation of Israel.
Shemesh did well in his new home. He became head landscaper for the municipality of Jerusalem, in charge of beautifying the city's parks. He and his wife had eight children and 13 grandchildren. And by the time he died at age 65, he had many friends, both fellow Jews and the Palestinians who worked for him.
At sundown tonight, Israel will begin celebrating the 54th anniversary of its independence. It will remember Shemesh and the hundreds of thousands of other Jews who came from all over the world to help build their own nation.
But at a time when Israelis and Palestinians are locked in a bloody struggle -- one that Israelis fear could threaten their very existence as a Jewish state -- the day will also commemorate those who have died in wars and terrorist attacks.
Among the victims: Yosef Shemesh's son and daughter-in-law.
Three weeks ago, on the afternoon of March 21, Gadi Shemesh accompanied his wife to an ultrasound appointment in downtown Jerusalem. They were a good-looking young couple: he, a career soldier in the Israel Defense Forces; she, an accountant in the bookstore at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.
The Shemeshes had two little girls, and Tsipi Shemesh was pregnant again, this time with twins. The ultrasound showed everything was fine.
As they came out of the doctor's office about 4 p.m., Gadi's mobile phone rang. It was his brother, Yaakov, wanting to know who should pick up the supplies for the upcoming seder, the traditional Passover meal.
"Why don't you get them?" Gadi said. He didn't want to tire his wife.
Ten minutes later, Yaakov Shemesh heard from a colleague that there had been an explosion in central Jerusalem, on King George Street. Yaakov knew the area well; he went by there every day on his way home from his job as a hotel security chief.
He immediately turned on the radio. First reports said there were only minor injuries. But the street was closed, so Yaakov waited to leave work.
About 5 p.m. his mother called, worried about him. He assured her he was fine.
"What about Gadi?" she asked. "I can't get Gadi on the phone."
"Gadi is fine," he told her. "I talked to him a few minutes ago. Maybe because of the explosion the phones aren't working." Besides, Yaakov knew, Gadi rarely went downtown in the afternoon.
At 6 p.m., Yaakov finally caught a bus home. As it passed King George Street, he could see people washing blood from the pavement. His phone rang again; it was his mother, this time hysterical.
A man from the army had just come to her apartment. A suicide bomber had blown himself up outside a little cafe near a doctor's office. Besides the bomber, one unidentified person was dead. A second person, badly wounded, had been identified by his uniform and dog tags: It was Gadi Shemesh.
Slowly, Yaakov began to absorb what his mother was saying. "Go to Hadassah," she ordered him. So he got off the bus and headed instead to Jerusalem's largest hospital, Hadassah Ein-Kerem.
Gadi Shemesh died a short time later, four days shy of his 34th birthday. And by now it had become clear that the other victim was Tsipi.
Yaakov and the rest of the family gathered at their mother's apartment. How were they going to tell the couple's two little girls, Shoval and Shachar, that their parents were dead?
After dozens of suicide bombings, Israeli society has developed ways of dealing with issues like these. A psychologist came by that evening and said: Tell them the truth. Tell them exactly what happened.
Shoval, 7, had seen news of the bombing on TV and understood that her parents had gone to heaven. She had been learning about heaven at school. It was hard to tell how much 3-year-old Shachar absorbed, except that she seemed to realize her mother and father would not be coming home.
According to Jewish custom, the dead are to be buried as soon as possible. As a soldier, Gadi was entitled to be interred in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl, overlooking the city of Jerusalem. But the family wanted Tsipi to be buried there, too: "They died together and they should be buried together," Yaakov insisted.
The family sat up all night waiting for permission from the Ministry of Defense. They finally got word at dawn: Yes, Tsipi could be buried next to her husband.
More than 1,000 people attended the funeral. Shoval had done a drawing of a heart and flowers, and on it she had put a message to her parents. One of her uncles read it aloud:
"I am writing you a letter because I am parting from you. I won't see you for a very long time."
There was not a dry eye among the mourners. Some of those crying the hardest were Gadi's fellow soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces.
The suicide bomber was identified as a policeman for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Yaakov Shemesh figures he targeted Gadi because of his uniform.
"He was a soldier, let him die fighting like a man," Yaakov says of his brother. "But his wounds were all in his back. And why kill a mother?"
Other than that, Yaakov shows remarkably little bitterness. His father, who became friends with many of his Palestinian employees, taught his children to respect Arabs.
"We are all neighbors," Yaakov says. "Even today I don't hate Arabs. We have always supported the peace process. I know the Palestinian people have suffered. There's only a very hard-core center -- of which the Palestinian Authority is a part -- doing all of these things."
Gadi and Tsipi's daughters have gone to live with Gadi's sister, Anat. They already were close to their aunt because she lived across the street from them. The girls' room in their new home has been arranged to look exactly like their old one.
"It's very important to get them back into a routine," Yaakov says.
There have been so many terrorist attacks in Israel -- six in central Jerusalem alone since Jan. 1 -- that the March 21 bombing quickly faded from the news. But Gadi's mother, Bracha, remembers how handsome he looked the last time she saw him, and she still can't believe she will never see him again.
There is one thing that keeps her going: Gadi's little girls.
"He left us a treasure," she says. "That's what we have now. That's why we're living, to take care of them."
-- Susan Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com