TIMES OF ISRAEL
by Gavriel Fiske and Stuart Winer
August 24, 2014

Hundreds of people, among them President Reuven Rivlin, attended the funeral Sunday of Daniel Tragerman, 4, who was killed by shrapnel on Friday when a mortar shell fired from the Gaza Strip exploded near his home at Kibbutz Nahal Oz. “We were the happiest family in the world, and I just cannot come to grips with it,” said Daniel’s mother Gila Tragerman, at the funeral.

[A red alert warning gave the family just three seconds to reach a safe room, and the child did not make it in time.]

“We wanted to say thanks (to Daniel); you taught us how to love and you gave us so much joy. I find solace in the fact that you were a loved and happy child until your last minute. We wanted to protect you but even the code red siren failed to save you,” she continued. “You would always run first and call your little brother (to the shelter), and then in a second it ended. We don’t want to say goodbye. You are the love of my life, the perfect child, every parent’s dream: smart, sensitive, ahead of his age group and beautiful, so beautiful.”

She continued: “We always said that you’d be the youngest world leader who would bring peace; so, if not in life then, we hope, in death.”

“Kibbutz Nahal Oz, you have paid in blood, which is beyond price,” Rivlin said, addressing a crowd composed largely of residents of rocket-battered southern communities. “An entire country is embracing you……”

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http://www.timesofisrael.com/hundreds-attend-funeral-of-toddler-slain-by-mortar-fire/#ixzz3BJx0KKWC