Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser are dead. Today’s prisoner exchange for Samir Kuntar was in exchange for two soldiers who Hezbollah has lied about for the past two years as being alive, is a sad day for Israel.

The soldiers families and Israel’s heads of State as well as military leaders arrived at the IDF Shraga base in the North of Israel today. After what I can only imagine to be one of the profoundest grief filled moments, each family spent about an hour with their loved ones, who were placed in two separate tents to afford privacy and accommodate both families.

Psalms and letters were read aloud as well as the Jewish mourning prayer of Kaddish. The army chief saluted both coffins.

Meanwhile, Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi sent a letter to all IDF soldiers, telling them that

“today we are biting our lips…yet at the same time we are holding our heads high as a nation and as an army that are committed to the values of Judaism and to the special codes of Israeli society. The supreme value of the sanctity of life and mutual responsibility are entrenched in our national and social psyche,” the army chief wrote. “They are nobly expressed in the IDF every day…even when the price is high, we will remain committed to our values and beliefs, which distinguish the IDF and the people of Israel, and in this moral context too we shall be worthy of serving as a ‘light unto the nations.’”

IDF officers as well as dozens of citizens lined the road and saluted the coffins as they made their way to the base in honor of the dead soldiers.

Honoring their memory, my heart cries out for these families today.