Israel is demanding the return of all the hostages, and at this point, the issue is a couple of bodies that the enemy, after two years of destruction, is unable to localize. Our war chiefs are quoted as threatening to restart the war. Why are decomposed cadavers so important for the Jews?
I am reading about Cecil Roth's History of the Jews in Venice. The University of Padua claimed bodies for its lessons of anatomy, and the Jewish community paid for being excluded. Sometimes, cemeteries were robbed or bodies were snatched during funerals.
I never understood the cult of the dead. The champions were the Ancient Egyptians, who erected mountains of stone blocks to store embalmed bodies and their cats. We may have caught this משוגאַס from them, or the Ancient Greeks, whose battles never ended till they recovered their fallen companions. But no, every human society always treated its dead with ceremony, hoping vaguely for resurrection here or in Hades. Or revenge if they were mistreated.
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