When sirens blared around the city of Beit Shemesh on the second day of the battle, Rabbi Yitzhak Bitan instructed his son to find a safe place at home rather than go to the nearest shelter.
But Yaakov was worried and preferred to go.
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He and his two younger sisters, Avigail and Sarah, took refuge under the local synagogue. His parents stayed at home.
Yitzhak Biton’s children Yaakov (top center), Avigail, 15 (right), Sarah, 13 (left) and Rachel (center).
Three minutes later, the missile hit.
“There was a tremendous explosion and an enormous blast wave,” Bitton recalls. “The ceiling fell in, the windows blew out, everything collapsed, it’s a miracle we survived.”
Emergency crews work at the site of an Iranian strike in Beit Shemesh. Image: Reuters
Rabbi Yitzhak Bitan, whose three teenage children were killed in an Iranian attack
The synagogue was destroyed and on fire.
Bitton waited as rescue workers slowly began to bring out the bodies. Finally the police asked him to leave.
“We waited at home until they came to take the DNA sample. Then I realized where this was going.”
The school and synagogue were destroyed
Nine people were killed in the missile attack on Beit Shemesh, including Yitzhak Bitan’s three teenage children.
A school and a synagogue were razed. It was the deadliest attack on Israel since the war began.
We meet Biton and his wife Tamar, the seven days of Jewish mourning for Shiva, in a Jerusalem hotel.
Yitzhak Biton and his 17-year-old son Yaakov
A constant stream of visitors are coming to sit with the family and offer their comfort. Their one surviving child, four-year-old Rachel, chases around the lobby on a scooter.
“The girl understands and knows, she sees the change, but she’s dealing with it bravely. She knows she’s gone to a higher place,” Bitton says.
Faith helped the couple cope. Tamar does not want to be interviewed but smiles beautifully for a photograph.
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Tamar Bitton
The rabbi prefers to talk about children
Her husband is happy to talk to us about his children but as a religious man, he cannot be drawn into politics or his government’s decision to attack Iran, which has come at such a terrible cost to his family.
He said that I will not interfere in such matters.
“He was very special. But I understand that everything is according to the will of the Creator. In war, in the end, everyone is known to be a loser. There is no war in which one person emerges as the real winner.
“Sometimes the victor is the vanquished.”
