Captain Doctor Ori Yosef Silvester (30), the doctor of the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion who was killed on Monday by an explosive drone impact in southern Lebanon, wrote a haunting post on his last birthday, October 15th, in which he expressed hope for the war and the loss that comes with it to end.
"Two years ago, a week after the war broke out, I 'celebrated' my birthday. The small and private joy was joined by a stress that has accompanied every moment of happiness since then. The growing stories of horrors and loss disturbed the normal balance of life, between evil and good, and messed up the ability to feel emotions the way we learned to feel them. Since then, to me, every joy is sullied by sadness, and even the sadness is diminished compared to the great and terrible loss," Silvester wrote.
He added, "Now, after two years, the heart can finally go on a diet, and there is a real reason to celebrate. Beyond the great joy that many people's loved ones have returned to their families, and the circle of loss will stop growing, I only hope that this point is the beginning of the healing process for everyone."
"I hope that from now on, we can recalibrate our emotions - to feel joy without immediately thinking about how we are overly privileged to feel it. I hope that the gloomy prophecy of the line: 'Someone already sang it' from 'The Song After War' is disproven, and after an unprecedented war, we will break the cycle of wars in Israel, and we will enter a time of peace and prosperity without an expiration date," he concluded.