Echoes of July 27th: Majdal Shams' journey through grief and healing

On July 27th, a few minutes after the end of Shabbat, we received a notification on our phones: a Hezbollah rocket hit a football field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, on the Golan Heights, a magical place that serves as our base every time we take a trip to the north of Israel.

As soon as we received the news, we messaged our friends who live in the village to make sure they were safe and everything was okay—the newspapers were not giving any other information besides the explosion caused by the rocket. They immediately told us that some kids who were playing football on the pitch were killed in the attack and that they were rushing to the field to look for them.

It took hours and extensive efforts to confirm that 12 kids lost their lives in the attack, marking a day that will never be erased from the memory of the Israeli people and the Druze communities throughout the region.

A poster depicting the 12 children who lost their lives in the Majdal Shams explosion caused by a rocket launched by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.

How Northern travel is shaped by the conflict

A few days after the funerals were held, we went to visit our friend Ahed, whose neighbour’s son was killed in the attack on July 27th. He was ready to share with us the memories of the attack and the feelings of the village's population.

We left from Pki’in at 3:30 pm, located in the northern district of Israel, and reached Majdal Shams at 5:00 pm, after a total travel time of an hour and a half compared to the usual hour it would have taken us under regular circumstances. Due to the war and the constant airstrikes by Hezbollah, the GPS in the north of the country has been diverted by the IDF, which now directs all locations from Haifa upwards to Beirut Airport.

The north is dotted with military bases and weapons factories, and the best way to prevent them from being hit by rockets and drones from the Lebanese terrorist group is to tamper with the GPS functionality within the territory. However, this results in the total shutdown of Google Maps, Moovit, Waze, and Apple Maps, meaning the only way to navigate the roads is by using offline maps in the old-fashioned way, inevitably taking more time than necessary to travel from one city to another.

Memories and memorials: a city transformed

Once we passed the entrance to the city of Majdal Shams, everything seemed normal: cars were clogging the village streets, cafes were filled with large families, and mothers were picking up their children from their friends' houses. But there was something in the air, something palpable, that made it clear the city was no longer the same.

Right after a quick stop at Ahed's house, we headed towards the football field that was hit on July 27th, where he would show us the affected area and the memorials built by the kids in memory of their friends.

A bomb shelter installed on the field three days before the attack still bears the indelible marks left by the explosion. Only five kids managed to take shelter in the safe room before the rocket struck the ground. Majdal Shams is located a few kilometers from the Lebanese border, meaning rockets take only a few seconds to reach the area, giving people literally just a handful of seconds to reach the shelter. The rocket that hit the football field was launched directly from behind the mountain that overlooks the city.

The bomb shelter where five kids managed to hide before the missile launched by Hezbollah struck the area.

But how did this missile manage to strike the town? The residents, still shaken by the event, explored every possibility. The first and most plausible one is that there was a malfunction in the Iron Dome, the Israeli air defense system that intercepts rockets fired from enemy territories, causing them to explode in the air and preventing them from hitting the ground. This system has an accuracy of 95%: it rarely fails to achieve its goal, but unfortunately, this seems to have been one of those times. The other widely discussed option is that the Iron Dome actually worked, but a piece of the rocket exploded in the air and fell onto the field, causing the explosion—a less likely option, as the aftermath of the explosion would have been significantly different.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, after searching the area, two things were clear: five kids had managed to save themselves, and 11 had not reached the shelter in time, but one child was still missing. Hoping he had managed to escape, the parents and friends started calling his name, hoping he would run to them. To their utter shock, his body was found lying on the ground—without a head, which was later found a hundred meters from the impact site, near the gas station in the area.

The day after the explosion, early in the morning, funerals were held for the deceased children, children who belonged not only to their families but to an entire people, who flocked in droves to pay their last respects to the kids.

Among the various peculiarities characterizing the Druze religion, the belief in reincarnation cannot be forgotten, a belief that, in a moment like that of July 27th, brought comfort to the entire population. The Druze conceive the human body as a vessel for the soul, which, after the body expires, travels to its next container, never truly dying. The belief is so strong that the Druze tend not to visit the graves of the deceased after burial, thus allowing the souls the freedom to travel to the body of a new Druze child about to be born. When a child loses their life, their soul travels to the body of a child who will belong to another family but will remain within the greater Druze family.

Keeping the spirits of the lost children alive

Just like a big family, everyone has taken care of the 12 children who are no longer with us. The older kids printed large posters with the names and faces of the children, the younger ones arranged many candles in 12 cups—just like those won in football matches—the mothers wove beautiful flower crowns, the fathers hung flags and placed 12 footballs on 12 chairs in the roundabout in front of the pitch, each with the name of a child. The entire football field has become a beautiful memorial where children and their families continue to play football in front of the photos of their friends, making them still an integral part of the team and playing side by side, in the certainty that in a few years, the souls of the 12 kids will return to play their favorite sport on that same pitch.

A memorial created by the citizens of Majdal Shams to honor the memory of the 12 children who perished in the attack on July 27th, 2024.