Israel’s News Blog Magazine: Daily Stories Video and PhotosThough more than two years have passed since their son, Raanan, was killed in a gang brawl at Kibbutz Shefayim, Adi and Yitzhak Levy still grieve for the loss of their only son. Raanan, a bright, talented, teenager from Rishon L’Zion, had completed his final high in school year and was looking forward to his army service and academic studies afterwards.
A quiet boy who was not part of the ever increasing nightclubbing set that many Israeli teenagers have recently become involved in, Raanan had been encouraged to go out on December 18, 2004, to a popular night at the Kibbutz that was known as a place to live it up and have good time. Coming only three months after the death of his sister who succumbed to complications from cerebral palsy, Raanan was reluctant to go out, and only did after his parents thought it would be good for him to “clear his head” after all the sadness that had been occurring in the Levy household following his sister’s death.
The Levys were crushed when they received a phone call from the police later night, informing them that their son had been killed in a fighting incident at the nightclub, and that they were now asked to go to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute to identify his body. When all of the details of the incident began to come in, Adi and Yitzhak were informed by Raanan’s friends that he had been killed by the boyfriend of a girl that Raanan has been suspected of flirting with at the nightclub. According to the friends, the ‘flirting incident’ had amounted only to Raanan smiling at the girl, who was apparently enjoying the attention she was receiving by a number of boys at the club, including Raanan.
To this day, the actual murderer has not been apprehended, although Raanan’s friends had come forth and told their side of the story to the police investigators. The tragic result of this story is the death of a fine young man who had so much potential and may have made a fine soldier as well as embarking on an academic study career, since he passed his matriculation exams “with flying colors”.
“Young people in Israel are becoming more and more violent, and ones like our son are considered as not part of the group if they are quiet and polite”, Raanan’s mother was quoted as saying. Their only surviving daughter had told them that they are “living in a dream world, as these kind of incidents occur all the time now”.
With drugs and alcohol easily obtainable, together with violence on television and at the cinema, Israel’s youth are becoming more aggressive and less value oriented. Violence at schools is also becoming common with children carrying knives and other weapons with them to school, as well as to places of entertainment. Raanan’s parents feel that not enough is being done to educate our youth, and until greater efforts are made, incidents like this one will continue.
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