YOM HAZIKARON – ZACHOR! REMEMBER ISRAEL’S 23,085 FALLEN! JEWISH INDEPENDENCE MEANS CONSTANT SACRIFICE & STRUGGLE

A DAY OF AGONY

Paula R. Stern

Jewish Press, April 15th, 2013

I went last night, as I do almost every year, to our local ceremony remembering Israel’s fallen. I’ve lived in this city going on 12 years. Where at first I knew none of the names, there are now three that I recognize, families that I know. Each year, I am grateful that there aren’t more; desperately, almost embarrassingly grateful not to be sitting up in the front.

“Who is sitting there?” Shmulik asked me last night. He’s been to these ceremonies before, but never paid attention. That is where the mayor sits, his assistants and deputies. The chief rabbis of our city and others. But most significantly, this is where the bereaved families sit. They are separated by a low barrier so they won’t be bothered, so they can grieve a bit in private, as they sit among thousands who have come to honor them and the sons and daughters they have lost.

The ceremony begins just moments before 8:00 p.m. It is windy and cool this year; sometimes it is unbearably hot. The park, where tonight there will be singing and dancing and fireworks, was packed last night for the Memorial Day ceremony. It is a unique and amazing yearly event – to cry with all your heart one day and then smile and dance and be happy the next. We sit there knowing we will dance tomorrow night, knowing these families will not.

Young teenagers walk onto the stage, each carrying large Israeli flags. They are divided into two lines, each moving to the side of the stage where they will remain throughout the ceremony. A man comes to the front; I don’t know his name but he has a beautiful, deep voice – he will lead the ceremony, introduce each of the speakers and singers.

He tells us in a moment, the siren will sound and asks us to stand. He asks the parents to watch over the children so that they don’t make noise and for other adults to watch if children here without parents are overly noisy. Then there is silence. Thousands are waiting for the siren. We wait …

It begins with a quiet wail, gaining and reaching the top. Unlike the real air raid siren, the sound does not go up and down – it is an endless cry that reaches into your heart and fills your eyes. They burn and you try to blink them away. I stand beside one son; another is at home with his wife. What right do I have to cry? God has blessed me – my sons are alive and safe.

The siren ends – not abruptly, but as it began, a slow decline to silence. The flag is lowered and we are asked to sit down again.

More teenagers come forward – there are four this time. The two in the middle begin a slow recitation of the names of those we have lost from our city – there are so many, too many. The father of the last to fall is asked to say the mourners prayer and the audience stands again and answers “Amen” at the appropriate times.

The mayor speaks; others as well. Songs – horribly sad songs of love of land and family, of country of life are sung. Your heart breaks and you want it to end. You want to go home and never come to another ceremony, knowing you will be there again next year, and the year after, and after that.

In all the years I have been in Israel, I have missed very few. Perhaps when my children were very young, or I was pregnant and sitting on a hard floor for an hour was torture. I know when Elie was in the army, I couldn’t go. I couldn’t sit there and listen and think. I was ashamed of my cowardice and begged the families to forgive me.

The first time I went was in Elie’s last year in the army – when he went with me. That, somehow, I managed to do. Last night, I sat next to Shmulik and as with Elie, his being there gave me comfort.

Memorial Day in Israel is as it should be – it is not a day of picnics and sales. It is not about barbecues and fun. It is agony; it is pain. It is tears and sad songs on the radio. It is a candle burning in my house in their memory, and it is the constant knowledge that without their sacrifice, we would not sing and dance tonight. We would not be free, here in our land. May God bless the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and forever keep them in His heart, as they are in ours.

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BETWEEN CEMETERIES AND STAGES

Ariella Ringel-Hoffman

Ynet News,  Apr. 14, 2013

R's son was killed during the Yom Kippur War. He was just over 18 years old; "not long after he completed basic training and was sent to the (Suez) Canal," she told me this week. A's son was also killed in the same war. He was a reservist in the Armored Corps who joined his unit on Shabbat, "before he was even called up." G's father was killed in the first Lebanon War; so was B's son. A and R, whose mothers I know very well, were killed in the Second Lebanon War.

All these people, the fathers and mothers, as well as several others, have been calling me over the past few days following a previous column in which I said that the grief of Memorial Day should be separated from the celebrations of Independence Day. "Don't let up," said the father of B, who was killed when his convoy drove over on a mine in the security zone in south Lebanon. "We haven't celebrated Independence Day in our house for 18 years." The mother of R, who was killed during the Yom Kippur War, said: "My grandchildren knew from a very young age that Independence Day celebrations are not for our family."

On the radio the other night a woman spoke of her uncle, her father's brother, who was killed in Kiryat Ye'arim during the War of Independence. She said she grew up into this bereavement, a third generation of mourners, and spoke of how difficult things were at home. The hardest day, she said, was Independence Day, which begins on Memorial Day. On this day, when bereaved families are at the cemeteries, municipal workers begin to set up the stages for the Independence Day festivities.

The days must be separated, the woman said on the radio. I can't understand why they don't do it, she said. As though we need this sorrow on the day before Independence Day to be reminded that the State of Israel's independence was, and still is, bought with blood and the price, to those who paid it, it too heavy. Some bereaved families make good arguments against separating the days. For example, the mother of a soldier who was killed during the Second Lebanon War wants the joy of Independence Day to be accompanied with the sorrow of loss. "Even if Independence will be celebrated six months after Memorial Day, I still won't go to see Eyal Golan perform," she told me.

And yet, it is not the justified arguments of the bereaved families which should guide the decision makers, but the understanding that in this case, in contrast to our dramatic tendency to become hysterical whenever it seems that the Israeli ethos may be threatened, the separation no longer threatens it. The issue of separating Memorial Day and Independence Day demands reconsideration and a creative solution, because in this country, tragically, there are always more fallen soldiers and grieving families.

EXCUSE US FOR EXISTING
Elyakim Haetzni
Ynet News, Apr. 10, 2013
 

Ramallah has announced that it "doesn’t trust" the Israeli pathologists who ruled that Maisara Abu Hamdiyeh, a life prisoner terrorist, died of cancer. Even before the autopsy was completed, they already rushed to condemn the medical care the terrorist received in jail. Yet they are not the ones I'm complaining about, but rather the authorities and those influencing our public opinion. Our hospitals are filled with Arab patients, from the Hamas-ruled Gaza as well. In the Israeli prison murderers enjoy medical treatment which they never dreamed of having, they come out with new, expensive sets of teeth, acquire an education and study languages. And the prison? It's a combination of a sanatorium, an academia and a school of terrorism – both theoretical and practical.

And yet, despite all that, when their leader Mahmoud Abbas impudently and shamelessly disregards the professional integrity of our doctors, we remain silent. Because those are the rules of the game we have set: The "Palestinian" is always the poor person, and in any case the accusing one. Israel's job is to take it in stride, restrain itself, and in the best-case scenario – defend itself unwillingly. We will still apologize to the dead terrorist's family and pay them damages. 

The entire world denounces the "apartheid roads" in Judea and Samaria, although in broad daylight Jews and Arabs share every road open to Jews. On the other hand, large signs in bright red ban Jews from travelling on roads in areas specified by the Oslo Agreements for Palestinians. Route 443 has been opened to Arabs as well following a High Court order, but a nearby road – which would have cut the time it takes to travel from Gush Dolev-Talmonin to Jerusalem by at least 30 minutes – remains closed to Jews to this very day. Both apartheid and racism: Israel's Arab citizens are free to enter Jenin, while a Jew will be prosecuted.

When was the last time a state official took journalists on a tour on the ground, to get them to realize that the apartheid on the roads of Judea and Samaria is exclusively against Jews. And which of our media outlets ever exposed the shamefulness of their apartheid: That God forbid should a Jewish-Israeli set foot in Nablus or in 90% of Hebron or in any Arab village? Because that's the rule: The state of the Jews should be brought to trial. Why? Because it put itself there in the first place.

Ramallah's propaganda mouthpieces won't stop calling us "Nazis." Why hasn't a single government spokesman or Israeli media outlet confronted them with the truth – that their leader, the founder of their national movement who they admire to this very day, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a real Nazi – an associate of Hitler and Himmler, the founder of the SS divisions, the man in charge of Nazi Germany's broadcasts to the Arab world throughout the entire war and an active collaborator in the annihilation of Jews? And who will remind them that the Arabs longed for Hitler to win?

That to this very day they are the biggest consumers of "Mein Kampf" and that their cartoons could give a good fight to "Der Stürmer"? Where did the damned guilt complex come from, preventing us from telling the truth even to ourselves? "Peace is made with enemies"? Would the British and Americans have reconciled with the German enemy had it erected the Heinrich Himmler square in the heart of Berlin or held a statemilitary funeral for Mengele as the Palestinians did for Abu Hamdiyeh? The gentiles are not the ones who invented "peace with enemies." That is our own pathology.

In his speech, Obama told us: "It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished.” He also said that "it is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a student’s ability to move around the West Bank; or to displace Palestinian families from their home." Each of these accusations is a lie and libel, and yet we have not heard even a polite tweet of denial. When will we realize that the world will not respect us as long as we do not respect ourselves, and that the material independence, which we are about to celebrate, has no use without mental independence?

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DRUSE PARTICIPATE IN ISRAEL'S JOY AND SORROW

Ariel Ben Solomon

Jerusalem Post, Apr. 15, 2013

Israel’s Druse community is proud to take part in both Remembrance Day and Independence Day, identifying itself as an integral part of the state whose members have served in all of the wars in its history. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, there are around 130,000 Druse in Israel. Among them, 20,000 live on the Golan and are seen as distinct in terms of national loyalty as they tend to identify with Syria as opposed to Israel.

The Druse originated in the 11th century as an offshoot of the Ismaili Shi’ite Fatimid dynasty in Egypt and its ruler Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, believed to be a messianic, divine figure. The Druse made their way north and settled in the region covered by the modern states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel.

Amal Naser Eldeen, the director of the Druse Yad Lebanim Center in the village of Daliyat al-Karmel and a Likud Knesset member from 1977 to 88, spoke with The Jerusalem Post on the eve of Remembrance Day. “The Druse were the only ones who told the Jews yes, when they were surrounded and attacked by Arab armies,” Eldeen said. “There were agreements between the Jews and the Druse before the existence of the State of Israel,” he added.

The Yad Lebanim Druse Center founded in 1982 maintains the rights and memories of fallen Druse soldiers. Three hundred and ninety two Druse soldiers have been killed while serving in the IDF.

Eldeen fought for recognition and rights for Druse from early on, and made a deal with Menachem Begin when he was the head of the opposition. Begin told Eldeen that he was planning to improve the conditions of the Druse if he won the elections. He joined the Likud in 1977 and was elected to the Knesset that year.

Asked by the Post what he remembered from the 1948 war, he said, “I remember that the Arabs said that they would throw the Jews into the sea and they came with all of their weapons, when there were 600,000 Jews in the country,” emphasizing that “the Druse stood with the Jews…. You have to understand that the Jews are not alone, but with the Druse.”

Eldeen’s son Lutfi fell in a battle while serving Israel in the South in 1969. One of his two daughters then named her son Lutfi and he fell too, during the war in Gaza in 2008. Another son, Saleh, was captured and taken prisoner by Hamas in 1995. His whereabouts are unknown. Eldeen has two other sons, one who just finished his army service and another who is set to join the Israel Air Force. He says that today all positions are open to the Druse in the army.

Yad Lebanim also serves as a military preparation academy, preparing Druse youth for their army service. In 1956, military service became obligatory for the Druse and Circassian populations. Asked about what he thought about the current debate in Israeli society regarding haredim and Arabs in the army, Eldeen said that Arabs should not be forced to serve because they “have family on the other side,” so they should do national service. As to haredim, he said there is no excuse for them not to serve in the army, and that they must also learn professions. Eldeen understood that some haredim will still be allowed to dedicate themselves exclusively to the study of Torah, and pointed out that the Druse also have an arrangement whereby 15 percent are granted army exemptions in favor of religious studies.

Asked about the difference between the Druse in the Golan and those in the rest of Israel, Eldeen said that Israeli Druse were an “inseparable part of the state,” but that the Golan Druse have family in Syria, though he notes that all Druse are the same, like Jews. Bringing up the subject of the Syrian war, Eldeen said, “Syria is an enemy country, with or without Assad.”

Sheikh Samih Natur, the editor of the Druze Magazine Al-Amama and the author of an Arabic Encyclopedia of the Druse, told the Post that the Druse have a connection with the Jews going all the way back to Moses, who was given shelter by the Druse. What has to be understood about the Druse, he said, is that they always respect the place where they live and the ruling authority.

“I have family in Lebanon and Syria and I tell them that I will die for Israel and the one in Lebanon says he will die for Lebanon so if we ever met in battle we would have to kill the other, and we would see that as our destiny,” said Sheikh Natur.

He compares the Druse to the US melting pot, saying that the US is a land of immigrants, where everyone is seen as American. He claims the Druse have this mentality no matter where they are in the world, whether in the Middle East or in the West.

Asked about the conflict in Syria he said that the Israeli Druse should not interfere, stating that the Syrian people should sort out the issue themselves. He gives the same answer regarding the Golan Druse, stating that “every Druse community needs to decide for itself.”

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On Topic

23,085 Soldiers Have Fallen Protecting Israel: Jerusalem Post, Apr. 12, 2013—The Defense Ministry released its annual figures of fallen soldiers on Friday morning ahead of Remembrance Day, stating that 92 soldiers had fallen this year and a total of 23,085 have fallen in Israel's wars since 1860.

We are All Bereaved Families: Danny Danon, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 14, 2013—Every year, Israelis of all political and religious persuasions set their differences aside and unite in memory of the heroes whose sacrifices make the very existence of a safe, secure and prosperous Jewish state possible. A few hours before the solemn siren sounds throughout Israel, a sense of silent sorrow permeates the air and a celestial presence is felt that seems to be unique to our tiny nation.

To Remember, Cry and Rejoice: MK Shuli Mualem, Israel Hayom, Apr. 15, 2013—The seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot, during which Jews count the Omer, symbolize the time between the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Within this Jewish life cycle, there is an additional Israeli-Jewish life cycle, that which occurs from Passover to Independence Day — the two holidays that celebrate Jewish independence. Holocaust Remembrance Day and the Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism take place within both of these cycles.

I Am an Israeli Soldier: LATMA (video), Apr. 7, 2013
 

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