‘Tens of thousands’ at funeral

Israel’s Army Radio reports many as 20,000 attend the funeral of First Sgt. Nissim Sean Carmeli, the American-Israeli lone soldier killed in the Gaza strip during Operation Defensive Edge, and other media report as many as 18,000. Haifa’s main soccer club, Maccabi Haifa, which Carmeli supported, invites people to the city’s military cemetery to ‘come give final honors to a hero who was killed so that we can live.’

Sean Carmeli was a lone soldier and we don’t want his funeral to be empty […] That’s the least we can do for him and for our people.