[The following is a guest post by Anna Geifman.]

Today is the last day of Shiva for Yitzchak and Tali Imas, an Israeli couple gunned down by terrorists on August 31st while driving home to Beit Haggai, a small town near Hebron. If you did not know them personally, you should know about these beautiful people, of blessed memory indeed. For their killers, they were nameless symbols of the hated "Zionist entity". For their many friends, Tali and Yitzchak were inspired souls.

How often do you see faces that glow with peaceful light and quiet, almost shy happiness? This couple, parents of six children, possessed nothing yet behaved as if the world was theirs to share. And they did share -- their universe of faith and deeply-felt meaning. How many people do you know whose lives are filled to the brim, with no room left for superficiality, no space for cynicism, nor excuses for emptiness, weariness, or disenchantment? Aspiration to be Jewish to the core -- by fate and by choice -- permeated their virtuous lives.

I was in Europe the next day: not a word about this terrorist act against the Israeli civilians in the newspapers. Typically, the New York Times blamed the victims. Its insidious implication was: "Well, obviously... when Zionist extremists populate the settlements, Arabs respond with violence."

This is patently false. The Hamas, which rushed to take responsibility for this murder, has for years been killing innocents across the country, not just in the "disputed territories". Echoed by its myriad supporters, Hamas has repeatedly asserted that no part of Israel belongs to Jews. We are being killed not because we "occupy" the settlements but because we are living in this country.

To wonder what triggers Hamas violence is about as relevant as pondering Hitler's motivations. Yet, tragically, the settlers are scapegoated even in Israel. In "enlightened circles it has become commonplace to blame the "religious fanaticism" for the unrelenting bloodshed--and thus provide the terrorists with justification for murder.

"Religious fanatics" Yitzhak and Tali believed that, like Muslims, Jews should be free to pray at the Temple Mount and that the Holy Land must not be dealt with frivolously. Educated intellectuals, with degrees in history and philosophy, they knew that whenever land was sacrificed for peace, the peace was not lasting. In the land of Israel they were home in a sense that extended mere physical presence.

I don't have a memory of these two people apart from one another. Maybe it was because together they felt so strongly that Eretz Yisrael was our common consciousness, a bond that unified Jewish souls.