Americans serving in the IDF are called lone soldiers but they aren’t – no, not at all.
Look at this outpouring of love and grief for an a young American who died at the hands of jihadists while serving in the IDF.
Thousands upon thousands of Israeli mourners as far as the eye could see. Baruch hashem.
A day before his death, St.- Sgt. Max Steinberg, 24, awakened his parents in their Los Angeles area home at 4 a.m. to say he had survived a tank accident in Gaza but was heading back into the Strip to continue fighting with his Golani unit.
“We told each other how much we loved each other, and we wished him a safe return,” his father, Stuart, recalled as he eulogized his son on Wednesday. He and his wife Evie stood just a few feet away from their son’s freshly dug grave in Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl Military Cemetery.
First, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (pictured below), currently on a Middle East tour to encourage a cease fire between Gaza and Israel, stopped by the hotel shiva to pay his respects to the Steinberg family.
Kerry entered and exited the room swiftly, surrounded by men in black and refusing to take any questions from press. But he spent a significant chunk of time — considering his tight and urgent schedule — chatting with Evie and Stuart about their son, and with Paige and Jake about their relationship with their brother and their own plans in life.
“How’s your day?” Kerry asked as he sat down. “How’s your day?” Evie asked back. “My day’s going better than yours,” he said.
he family also told Kerry how stubborn Steinberg had been from the start about joining the Golani brigade, despite his initial rejection based on insufficient Hebrew skills. (At the funeral, Stuart remembered his son saying: “If it’s not Golani, it’s jail or it’s home.”)
“He was in the Golani unit?” Kerry asked. “Tough guy. Did you know he had that in him?”
