When we meet Vicki, she is clinging to an Israeli flag, her eyes moist with half-formed tears.

Across the road, a podium is being prepared. Before long, a rabbi will deliver an address in memory of Guy Illouz, a man Vicki never met but who she now comes to mourn.

"We are family in this country," she says. "I know him, but he doesn't know me. We are all responsible for each other, so that's why I am here today. This is my duty."

She has attended previous such occasions, including the funerals of Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the small children whose bodies were returned from Gaza in February.

She was once sure that Israel could live in peace with Gaza, but that certainty has been shaken by images of October 7 that rest in her mind.

'Barbaric, inhuman'

Image: Israeli soldiers carry the c

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