Iris Eden has twice lost the “love of her life” in violent acts of war.
Her husband, Maj. (res.) Yasys Eden, 44, was among the 73 soldiers killed when two Israel Air Force helicopters collided mid-air in southern Lebanon in 1997.
On Sunday, just days before the country’s Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers, her second love, Moshe Feder, 68, was killed by an anti-tank missile as he drove on a road near the Gaza border in southern Israel. He was buried Monday evening in their home city of Kfar Saba.
“My two great loves went up in flames, one on the plane and one in the car,” Iris told Army Radio on Monday morning.
“I spent 17 years with this wonderful man, who was the second love of my life,” Iris lamented.
“We shared a lot of happy moments together,” she said, adding that Feder “was everything to her.”
Feder was a shoulder to lean on; and a person she could consult and love, she said. He was generous, modest and humble and had helped her raise her three sons from her first husband.
He “loved life” and lived each moment to its fullest. She had warned him not to travel down south when there was tension, but he didn’t listen.
President Reuven Rivlin on Monday paid condolence calls to the families of the four rocket victims: Moshe Agadi, 58; Feder, 68; Pinchas Menachem Prezuasman, 21; and Ziad Alhamamda, 47.
Alhamamda was a member of Israel’s Bedouin community and lived in an unrecognized village outside of Ashkelon.
Rivlin told his family: “All the tribes of Israel are together for better for worse, in hopes and in hardships. Regardless of the tribe to which we belong – haredi, secular, religious, traditional, Jews or Arabs – terror ism strikes without discrimination, without mercy, and we will never give in to it.
“We are together in our joys and in our pain, and I fervently pray that none of you will know further sorrow,” Rivlin said.
When Rivlin visited the Prezuasman family, he was accompanied by Deputy Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman who, like the deceased, is a Gerrer Hassid. The rocket victim was in his early twenties, and the father of two young children. He was running for shelter when he was struck. “I know that we say ‘Blessed is the True Judge’” said Rivlin, “but we all know that there is no comfort in the face of such a terrible tragedy.”
He was accompanied to the home of the Alhamamda family by Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel who has a very close relationship with the Bedouin community, and has been instrumental in trying to improve their living conditions.
Rivlin told the mourners that he does his utmost to visit all sectors of Israeli society, especially when terror is the cause of a family’s bereavement.