Avi Shamriz, father of Alon who escaped from captivity and was accidentally shot by IDF forces, spoke in an interview Wednesday morning about the death of his relative Shay Shamriz in the battles in Gaza.
"Disaster, disaster. We are going from shiva (mourning) to shiva," Shamriz said in an interview with Radio 103FM. "We just got up on Sunday from shiva and we are already receiving more bad news."
"We were happy and cheerful people who loved life and these circumstances are bringing us to sit shiva for our sons and cry over our fate. The circumstances are terrible; we are fighting in Gaza. Shay was brave, born 9 days before my son Alon. We are quite close, the two families. The circumstances are so sad that it simply doesn't let me pull myself up. I keep on sinking into the pain and suffering we have endured from these events of October 7th."
He later said that President Isaac Herzog revealed to them that their relative had fallen in battle in the Gaza Strip: "Yesterday the President came to comfort us, and in the middle of the visit, his secretary informed him. He asked if we knew who Shay was, and told us that he was killed in Gaza and everything overturned, really overturned."
"The President came to encourage us and lift our spirits and solve our problems and suddenly we received more terrible news. I don't know where to put my head anymore. I can't even console his parents. I can only teach them how to sit and mourn seven days, which is not something happy to do."
When asked how they will continue from here, Shamriz replied: "We are usually a very strong family. We are strong people. We are all smiling and strong people, and from here, we will finish the shiva and try to lift them up like they are trying to lift us up. What is happening in the country is very difficult for us; very, very difficult. The circumstances are not simple."
"We are usually not political people. We stay away from politics. The circumstances are making us think, 'Are those who lead us really worthy of leading us? Are they doing their job?' It's infuriating that people in the government are just fighting and trying to blame each other."
"You must understand that Shay comes from a Religious Zionist home, and I am a 'kibbutznik”', even though I grew up in Ashkelon and I am more right-wing than I am portrayed. The circumstances have caused people to define me on the left side of the map and Shay on the right side of the map, but this is absolutely not true. It just shows how small the people up there are, they don't understand the situation we are living through. They don't understand that the people of Israel want to be united. We shouldn't have been in this situation."
He also said: "We should not have been in this situation at all. Whoever brought us to this situation, I have no words to describe them."
"If we had managed to get a warning half an hour before Hamas arrived at our kibbutz, everything would have looked completely different. We had weapons in our houses. We had ammunition. We would have gone out to the fences. We would have pushed them away, but we woke up to a situation where 200 terrorists were already inside the kibbutz and already pulling people out of their homes and shooting at them, instead of us pushing them over the fences. This is a catastrophe. As a result, we entered Gaza and soldiers are being killed every day. It breaks our hearts; these are all our sons."
"Perhaps through what I say, the politicians will listen and return to the straight path. Instead of criticizing each other, they will take care of the unity of the people," he concluded.