Two electric bikes, six electric scooters and one ATV, all scorched and burned. That is all that remains – a small fleet of vehicles that was supposed to bring its riders, the children of Majdal Shams who came to play on the municipal soccer field on Saturday, as they do every day, back home.

On Sunday, the remnants of this small fleet of vehicles were strewn near the mobile bomb shelter that was “donated with love for the defense of Israel’s citizens” by the Vision for Israel organization. This is the shelter some of the children tried to reach in their desperate flight for their lives, but none of them made it.

Witnesses say only three seconds passed between the sounding of the warning siren and the explosion of the missile Saturday evening. The missile fell on the fence that separates the smaller of the two soccer fields from the playground, with a gas station overlooking them both.

Now the fence is tattered and burned, the shelter is deserted and a not-very-large crater that doesn’t even hint at the scale of the horrifying death that landed here has opened nearby. Only when you move to the big soccer field, the one with real grass, and see the improvised monument that residents erected for the 12 slain children, is it possible to understand the scale of the disaster.

Twelve black chairs are wrapped in black cloth, with black boards placed at their feet, in memory of the 12 children who were massacred here, near the goal. Body parts of at least two children had been smeared over the goal’s net on Saturday. The smell of burning was still in the air on Sunday.

Twelve black chairs on the field where 12 children were killed by a rocket strike, in Majdal Shams, Sunday.Credit: Alex Levac

Young people from the town wandered silently from place to place on the soccer field that became their friends’ killing field. The quiet was violated only by the reporters from all over the world who came to cover the story, and the officers from the Israel Defense Forces’ Spokesperson’s Unit who came to engage in a little public diplomacy, even here. But the quiet was the most noticeable thing.

A damaged fence and destroyed bikes at the spot where a rocket from Lebanon killed 12 children in Majdal Shama, Sunday.Credit: Alex Levac

IDF Spokesperson Maj. Gen. Daniel Hagari in Majdal Shams on Saturday.Credit: Gil Eliyahu

The two soccer fields are side by side, astoundingly well maintained. You won’t find a single cigarette butt or scrap of paper on them. The real grass is well cared for, green and evenly cut.

The same is true of Majdal Shams, which in recent years has become a picturesque town, a marvelous cross between an alpine ski resort and a Levantine town, with a few new hotels. But on Sunday, the town was in mourning. Stores were closed completely, and all the residents wore black.

Children lay flowers at the spot where the rocket that killed 12 children in Majdal Shams landed, Sunday.Credit: Alex Levac

In the neighboring town of Masadeh, black flags were hung along every major street. In Majdal Shams, people were still too stunned to do that, just as they were too stunned to adorn the black chairs of the monument they erected on the soccer field with pictures of the dead children. Their pictures weren’t visible anywhere in Madjal Shams on Sunday, not even in the mourners’ homes.

Mourning in this Druze town is very different from the Palestinian mourning to which I am accustomed. Palestinians have more experience with it.

The mourning in Majdal Shams was very restrained on Sunday. Each of the dozen bereaved families gathered in its own home after the mass funeral, and only a handful of people came to pay condolence calls. In the home I visited, which belonged to the bereaved family of 11-year-old Yazan Abu Saleh, not more than half a dozen men were sitting on the plastic chairs in the front yard and trying to comfort the father, who never ceased his bitter weeping.

Families whose children were killed at a soccer pitch by a rocket launched across Lebanon’s border with Israel at the funeral in Majdal Shams, Sunday.Credit: Ammar Awad/ REUTERS

On street corners in Majdal Shams, young people gathered and silently watched what was happening. The signs of shock were evident on all their faces. Almost all of them saw unbearable scenes of atrocity on Saturday.

It was impossible to identify almost any of the children. Parents shouted for their children amid the bodies, siblings for their siblings and friends for their friends, but they weren’t able to identify the children. The entire town stood outside the soccer fields and watched what was happening in horror. In most cases, a long time passed before the victims were finally identified at the local clinic by the police’s victim identification unit and the bitter news was delivered to the parents, who didn’t recognize their children’s bodies.

12 children and teens killed in Majdal Shams on Saturday.

Majdal Shams mourned in its own way on Sunday, and the many contradictions in its identity and self-definition rose to the surface at this difficult time. The world defines it as a town under occupation, or as a town in occupied territory that has been annexed. But most of the residents I spoke with on Sunday, especially the younger ones, said they feel Israeli.

Half the government came to the funeral on Sunday to console them. Reporters for foreign television stations had trouble explaining to their viewers who these slain children were – not Palestinians, but living under occupation; neither Jews nor Israeli Arabs, but nevertheless residents of Israel.

Mourners carry the coffin of one of the 12 children killed during the rocket strike on Majdal Shams, Sunday.Credit: Leo Correa/AP

Since the war in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, neither the IDF spokesman nor the Israeli media have expressed even a smidgen of shock over the deaths of thousands of children there. But on Saturday, they rushed to put on shocked faces and define all the children killed in Majdal Shams as murdered Israelis – though apparently, only some of them are actually Israeli citizens. But go try saying the dead children of Gaza were murdered.

But politics was the last thing on the minds of people in Majdal Shams on Sunday. The well-tended soccer field, the streets and alleys, the entrances to the closed stores and houses all seemed shrouded with the shock. A wreath from the Yesh Atid party lay beside a wreath from a local insurance company, close to a burned-out bicycle. A white soccer ball held together with scotch tape, the ball the children were playing their last game with, rested at the foot of a pile of charred chairs serving as a memorial. A priest in his black robe was among the handful of people offering their condolences after the funeral. Everyone knows everyone else here, and the grief is commensurate.

Druze clergymen attend the funeral of the 11 children and teens killed in a rocket strike at a soccer field at the village of Majdal Shams, in the Golan Heights, Sunday.Credit: Leo Correa / AP

“They are the children of us all,” said 63-year-old Samir Abu Jaber, who was among the first to reach the scene of the disaster. He stood near the grocery store of Abu Jabal Gulan Hassan on Sunday, across from the soccer field, standing silently along with some other older men. Samir was in his house across the field when he suddenly heard a huge explosion which shook the walls of his house. He then saw a cloud of smoke rising to the sky. Along with his adult children he ran towards the field, barefoot.

At the gas station, he saw children with their faces covered in blood, but he realized that the real disaster was at the soccer field. He went in the direction of the crater that had formed there, and the view was horrific. “I still can’t digest what I saw there. A child missing half his head, children with no arms or legs, everyone completely covered in black. I couldn’t identify any of them.”

Local residents comfort each other as they gather at a site where a reported strike from Lebanon fell in Majdal Shams village in the Golan, on Saturday.Credit: Jalaa Marey/AFP

Samir says that he saw 20 children lying on the synthetic grass covering the small field, most of them dead. His wife fainted upon seeing the terrible sight and he needed to take her to a clinic. The mini-tractor belonging to one of the youths was burning in the background. “My head still can’t fathom what I saw.”

Samir’s daughter is a nurse at the Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa. She came home after midnight and rushed to help the wounded who had not been taken to hospital. The ones evacuated were taken by helicopter, others by ambulance. Samir couldn’t fall asleep all night. “I think I need a psychologist,” he said.

Basel Abu Jaber, standing beside him, lives on the “shouting hill,” which was used in the past to communicate with relatives across the border with Syria. His son Ivan, 17, was near the town’s community center when the explosion happened, 50 meters from where the missile landed. Ivan started looking hysterically for his 8-year-old cousin. He phoned his father, who phoned his uncle and aunt so they could come quickly and look for their son. He also searched for his friends, brothers Amir and Julian, aged 15 and 16. Amir lay dead on the goal’s net. His brother lay on the grass, his leg severed. Dozens of parents came to the pitch, starting to cry out their children’s names.

Teenagers mourn the death of the 12 Druze children killed by a rocket strike in Majdal Shams, Sunday.Credit: Alex Levac

“It’s not over till it’s over,” it says in English on a black T-shirt worn by one of the youths who were sitting on the steps of a house across the field. Graduates of grade 12, they formed a small, polite group of young people who were there Saturday evening. Aram, Majid, Rani and their friends looked like they were in shock on Sunday. Their Hebrew was poor, but they all want an Israeli passport. All of them, without exception, wish to see the IDF avenge the 12 small children from Majdal Shams, seeking a revenge not yet devised by the devil, in the words of poet Chaim Nachman Bialik.

They were disappointed that by Sunday evening nothing had happened. They want a strong response, “like in Yemen.” They want Hezbollah to be punished and intimidated. They know how strong Israel is and they want an accordingly fierce retaliation. Aram saw a dead child on the grass. He took off his shirt and covered the boy’s face. He couldn’t identify him. The whole group had played here in the past, this was their home field.

Not far from there, in an internal courtyard of a house, the males of the Abu Saleh family were siting and grieving for their son. Eleven-year-old Yazen was about to start grade 6. He was his parents Nasreen and Naif’s only son. They have two other daughters. Naif can’t speak; each sentence makes him cry again. His brother-in-law speaks for him. Naif heard the boom in his house and jumped up as if bitten by a snake, running toward the soccer field. He knew Yazen was there. Yazen used to practice there every afternoon. His family searched for over an hour among the wounded and dead children but couldn’t find him. Only after the bodies were transferred to a clinic could Yazen be identified by a police forensics team, which brought the terrible news to his father.

Teenagers mourn the deaths of the 12 children, in Majdal Shams, Sunday.Credit: Alex Levac

Last week, Yazen played the darbuka drum at his cousin’s wedding. He was happy. Yesterday he was buried. “In one week, we had a wedding and buried him,” whispers his father, again unable to stop his tears.

Gideon Levy

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