It was a moment that left no one unmoved and it took place in the hushed corridors of the neonatal intensive care unit at Ziv Medical Center in the Galilee, two weeks ago.
Lina El-Shaar, a mother from Majdal Shams whose 10-year-old son Milaar was killed in a Hezbollah rocket strike on a soccer field last year, cradled a fragile newborn in her arms. A baby boy from Syria who carried her late son’s name.
Lina El-Shaar tends to newborn Milaar
“I held him, bathed him, and called him ‘Mimo,’ just like I used to call my son, may his memory be blessed,” she said, her voice breaking.
The infant, just 10 days old, had been rushed across the border from a Druze village in Syria’s Quneitra province. He was gravely ill with life-threatening jaundice. Long before his birth, his parents had decided to name him Milaar in honor of their relative across the border, slain alongside 11 friends in the missile attack.
“When they sent me his photo the day he was born, I cried so much,” Lina said. “I felt as if my son Milaar had come back to life.”
A week later, she received a panicked phone call: the baby was dangerously ill and needed to be urgently transferred to an Israeli hospital. Lina came to his bedside at Ziv as the doctors there treated him. “I was so afraid we would lose another Milaar,” she said. “But I knew this was fate. I had to care for him.”
The baby’s mother, recovering from a difficult birth, struggled to tend to him. “If he hadn’t fallen ill, I don’t think I ever would have met him,” Lina added softly.
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Milaar El-Shaar killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack on Majdal Shams
(Photo: Courtesy of the family)
By the end of last week, little Milaar was well enough to return home to the Syrian village with his mother, his life having been saved. “We don’t have hospitals in our village,” the mother said. “When the midwife saw how serious his condition was, she said he must be hospitalized. The Israeli doctors saved him. They treated us with such respect and warmth. And meeting Lina, that was a gift.”
Throughout his stay, Lina prayed for the child’s recovery and still checks in on him daily. “Thank God, he is strong. He wanted to survive, to live,” she said. “He will grow up and bring light to his parents’ lives, just as my Milaar was the great light of ours.”