Haim Ben Aryeh

Haim Ben Aryeh was known as “Haim the Driver” to the children of Gush Katif, the bloc of Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza strip from which Israel withdrew in 2005, and in the Lachish Region where he drove a school bus for decades. After the surprise attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, Ben Aryeh helped evacuate children from Kibbutz Be’eri, where Hamas killed more than 100 people. “The first sentence he said when he came home crying in the middle of the night was, ‘I couldn’t help them,’” his wife, Irit told Ynet. He saw children wrapped in blood-stained blankets and elderly people wrapped in towels. In his years as a driver, Ben Aryeh had seen his share of violence: Shots were fired at his bus in Gush Katif, and he drove an ambulance. But the horrors of Oct. 7 proved too much for the father of eight: On Oct. 26, he was found dead inside his bus, having apparently died by suicide. (His age was not available.) “There are victims in war, there are victims on the front, that is known, but the victims of the home front are the victims of the mind,” said Irit. “He was a wonderful man and as great as his immense love, as great as his joy and light, his good eyes could not bear this darkness.”
Source: Jewish Telegraphic Agency