BREAKING NEWS

PM: Entire nation is 'draped in sorrow over the death of Assaf'

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement Sunday evening saying the entire nation was "draped in sorrow over the death of [IAF pilot] Assaf [Ramon], who fell from the skies, like his father Ilan, of blessed memory." "This is a horrible tragedy for Rona and the entire Ramon family. It is a tragedy for the people of Israel. I was moved when Ilan, the youngest of the pilots who destroyed the death generator in Iraq, took with him into space a reminder of the destruction of the Holocaust," the prime minister said, referring to a tiny Torah that survived Bergen-Belsen that Ilan took with him on the ill-fated Columbia space mission. "I was again moved deeply when Assaf continued in the path of his father and completed the pilot's course with distinction. The loss of one of these wonderful people, father and son, is a tragedy by itself." "The loss of both brings with it unbearable pain. There is no consolation for Rona and the Ramon family, no consolation for the people of Israel. There are only tears," the prime minister's statement concluded.