In a photo, baby Lior Lubliner is apparently crawling about on the grass, playing on the emerald green manicured lawn that could have been the grass of his local neighborhood park, or just his daycare’s playground, but it’s not.
Hauntingly, instead, the background setting gives it away.
A row of legs clad in army green pants and combat boots.
Soldiers who came to pay their last respects.
He’s crawling in a cemetery.
Like little babies his age, Lior’s curiosity got the better of him.
Nine-month-old Lior is crawling on his heroic fallen father’s fresh grave.
Sgt Major Ariel Lubliner.
His death placing Ariel’s fate as the 900th fallen soldier in this wrenching war since the barbaric Oct. 7 massacre.
Little Lior has no clue.
Yet.
He doesn’t realize he has just been orphaned.
He doesn’t realize his dad’s buddies and fellow comrades just lost a beloved comrade in arms.
He doesn’t realize how idealistic and holy his dad was — to arrive in Israel from Brazil as a Lone Soldier, to serve a fourth round of miluim (reserve duty) in this accursed war.
He doesn’t yet realize his mother is shattered.
He doesn’t yet realize his beautiful mother awaited her beloved’s return, never to see him again.
He’s playing on the grass, burial flowers in the background.
A crowd assembled, probably as tears trickle down their own cheeks, embracing and pinching sweet little Lior’s baby cheeks.
The juxtaposition in this photograph is jarring.
The sweet innocence and obliviousness of babyhood, of childhood, alongside premature unnatural death of a young healthy dad said to be exceptionally wonderful and kind, who sacrificed his life, for his little Lior and beloved wife Barbara.
One day Lior will know, though.
One day Lior will grow up and understand.
But now, he just plays and tugs at the fresh grass.
His broken mother nearby.
Lior was meant to begin his first day of daycare the following day.
Instead, for just a few minutes, it is his father’s fresh gravesite that has transformed into Lior’s play area.
900.
Each and every chayal (IDF soldier) is so very precious. A world unto itself.
The loss of human life has been staggeringly painful.
For every soldier that is killed and falls, potential worlds within him fall with him.
There’s so much color, contribution, skill, self-expression and infinity that lies within the soul of each person, that won’t come to be anymore.
But there is something startling about that round number.
900.
G-d forbid there should be a next. I pray for the end of this war.
But should there be, it won’t be soldiers killed in the hundreds anymore.
The next round number, departs from the hundreds into the territory of the thousands.
We have lost so much in this callous war.
I think parts of each of us individually, as well as us as a collective, have been forever extinguished.
When the war first began and Oct. 7 was still so fresh there was a certain momentum and adrenalin that catalyzed our emotional climate.
A confluence of societal tensions that have been beating the drums of opinion about this war has impacted us all.
More than anything, though, it’s the agonizing truth of being 22 months out from Oct. 7, another Rosh Hashanah on the horizon, and searingly still counting fallen soldiers.
900.
Searingly, still awaiting the return of the remaining hostages.
Still seeing jolting pictures when you think you’d already heard or seen the worst of the war.
A tiny baby sweetly playing on his heroic father’s fresh grave.
Right now, Lior doesn’t know yet.
One day, though, he will.
© IJN 2025
