Soldier slain by Palestinian coworker laid to rest in Holon

Family, friends bid goodbye to the "good-natured" Sgt. Tomer Hazan, who was lured to West Bank and killed.

By BEN HARTMAN
THE GRAVE of IDF Sgt. Tomer Hazan grave 370 (photo credit: Ben Hartman)
THE GRAVE of IDF Sgt. Tomer Hazan grave 370
(photo credit: Ben Hartman)
A joker with a passion for karaoke, an eternal optimist who loved to blow money on clothes, a good-hearted young man whose trust in the good will of others lead to his death.
There were many descriptions given by mourners at the funeral of IDF soldier Sgt. Tomer Hazan on Sunday afternoon, all of them marked by a feeling of tragedy and bewilderment at a life cut short and a death still clouded in mystery.
A little over 24 hours earlier, Palestinian Nidal Amar led Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) officers to the well in Samaria where he hid Hazan’s body after killing him the day before, shortly after luring him to the area after they got off work at a Bat Yam restaurant.
On Sunday, at the Holon military cemetery, friends of the fallen soldier spoke of him as the life of the party with a wicked sense of humor, a gracious and generous young man who planned to travel with his friends after their army service and then move in with them in a bachelor pad in Tel Aviv. Hazan had a magnetic smile, friends said, and would light up and steal the microphone when a song he loved was played at karaoke, though one friend admitted, there wasn’t a single song he didn’t love.
Overcome with emotion, Hazan’s father, Aryeh, did not speak Sunday, but in front of several hundred mourners, Hazan’s mother, Sara, described her son as a good-natured man whose naïve belief in the good intentions of others led him to trust the man who would murder him.
She also expressed a sort of resigned acceptance that they had now joined the legion of bereaved Israeli families, saying the family now had a new home to visit every day, at the Holon military cemetery.