Thread by @joshg99

Yesterday evening, my wife got a message that a BA student in her department, Bruna Veleanu, was killed at the rave in Southern Israel on Saturday. Bruna was an immigrant from Brazil, and her only family in Israel was her sister and mother. 🧵

Her burial was set for later the same night, and there was concern there would not be enough people in attendance for a proper religious ceremony as required by Jewish law (aka a minyan). My wife sprang into action trying to mobilize people at the university, order flowers, etc.

As we turned off the freeway to the cemetery, we were met with a huge traffic jam from people trying to get into the cemetery. "Well," we said to ourselves, "there must be a lot of funerals now because of all the people who died." Waze said the 1 KM trip would take 30 minutes.

When we arrived at the cemetery, we learned that everyone was there for Bruna! At least 1,000 people, some reports say 10,000 came, including five university deans. Many people were turned away by police who felt such a large gathering was inadvisable given the present situation.

As we stood there listening to her sobbing mother, sister and friends eulogize her through their tears, we were instructed that if the air raid sirens sounded, we should calmly lay on the ground where we stood and cover our heads with our arms.

As we all walked together to lower her into her final resting place, police came and told the crowd to go home: "There's a war on and if a rocket lands here now there will be hundreds dead." Everyone ignored them. Nobody was going to abandon her in those final moments.

Here are some media reports on the funeral:


mako.co.il/news-military/…
ultimosegundo.ig.com.br/mundo/2023-10-…

Earlier that day we attended a memorial service for a friend's parents who were killed Saturday morning when Gazan militants who were going door-to-door through their town shooting people destroyed their house with an RPG, apparently. They were a lovely, peace-loving couple.