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Country Bows its Head to Honor 23,320 Fallen: Yaakov Lappin & Lahav Harkov, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 21, 2015 — Israelis will come to a stop Tuesday evening to honor 23,320 fallen soldiers and civilian victims of wars and terrorism. A minute-long siren will sound out around the country at 8 p.m.
The Juxtaposition of Memorial and Independence Day in Israel: Ron Jager, Arutz Sheva, Apr. 20, 2015 —The weeks following Pesach are always an emotionally charged period in Israel.
Golani Commander: My Soldiers' Love For Their Country is Amazing: Israel Hayom, Apr. 20, 2015— This year's Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror, to be observed on Wednesday, will honor the memories of the 67 IDF soldiers who fell during last summer's Operation Protective Edge.
Yom Hazikaron for Veterans: Yair Rosenberg, Tablet, Apr. 20, 2015— Tuesday night marks the start of Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day.
Defense Minister Lights Virtual Candle in Honor of Israel's Fallen: Yaakov Lapin, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 20, 2015
23,320 Israeli Flags Being Placed on Graves of Fallen Soldiers: Times of Israel, Apr. 19, 2015
Bereaved US, Israeli Families Share a Loss That Bridges Cultures: Lidar Gravé-Lazi, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 21, 2015
Jewish Soldiers In World War II: Rhona Lewis, Jewish Press, Apr . 17, 2015
COUNTRY BOWS ITS HEAD TO HONOR 23,320 FALLEN
Yaakov Lappin & Lahav Harkov
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 21, 2015
Israelis will come to a stop Tuesday evening to honor 23,320 fallen soldiers and civilian victims of wars and terrorism. A minute-long siren will sound out around the country at 8 p.m. After the siren, a memorial torch-lighting ceremony will take place at the Western Wall, attended by President Reuven Rivlin and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot. At 11 a.m. on Wednesday, a two-minute siren will sound, before a state memorial ceremony will commence at the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in northern Tel Aviv, in the presence of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. At 1 p.m., a ceremony honoring the victims of terrorism will take place at the Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery, in the presence of Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Eisenkot.
“On Remembrance Day, the Israeli nation, as one big family, bows its head and unites with the memories of all of the fallen of Israel’s wars, as a moral obligation to those who in their death commanded us to live, so that we may be worthy of them,” Ya’alon wrote in a message on the Defense Ministry’s virtual candle lighting website this week.
Israel will commemorate 116 recently fallen soldiers and civilians who lost their lives in the past year. Of the 116 who lost their lives over the course of the last year, 67 soldiers and five civilians were killed during Operation Protective Edge last summer; leaving behind 131 bereaved families, 11 widows, 26 orphans, and 187 bereaved siblings. Two soldiers were killed in a Hezbollah missile attack in January. In addition, 35 IDF disabled veterans who died of their wounds have been recognized as IDF fallen soldiers this year.
There are some 553 soldiers, including St.-Sgt. Oron Shaul, who was killed in Gaza last summer, whose place of burial remains unknown. The ministry said there is a total of 9,753 bereaved families, 4,958 widows and 2,049 orphans aged up to 30. Max Steinberg, Jordan Ben-Simon and Sean Carmeli, new immigrants and lone soldiers who fell in the line of duty during Operation Protective Edge last summer, will have their stories told at the Remembrance Day event in the Knesset Tuesday evening.
The Steinberg family will attend the annual “Remembering Through Song” ceremony as guests of the Defense Ministry, which flew them in from Los Angeles. Tens of thousands of Israelis attended their son’s and Sean Carmeli’s funeral last summer in a national demonstration of solidarity after hearing they did not have family in Israel.
Hundreds of bereaved family members are expected to attend the event, cosponsored by the Knesset, the Families and Commemoration Department at the Defense Ministry and the Terror Victims Department at the National Insurance Institute. Rivlin will attend the event, at which Netanyahu, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, Ya’alon, IDF deputy chief of staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan and Police Commissioner Insp.-Gen. Yohanan Danino will recite poems about and by fallen soldiers.
Between recitations, singers Miri Mesika, Idan Amadi, The Revivo Project, Rotem Cohen, Ariel Horowitz, Shai-Li Atari and IDF Cantor Lt.- Col. Shai Abramson and the IDF Rabbinate Band and other IDF bands will perform songs inspired and written by fallen soldiers.
The event will also feature videos about fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, including a screening of an interview with the mothers of the three teens who were kidnapped in Gush Etzion last summer, as well as the story of the Dakar submarine, which disappeared at sea in 1968, told by its captain’s grandson, who is currently completing a submarine command course with distinction. “Remembering Through Song” will be broadcast live on television, radio and online at 9 p.m. on Tuesday.
THE JUXTAPOSITION OF MEMORIAL AND INDEPENDENCE DAY IN ISRAEL
Ron Jager
Arutz Sheva, Apr. 20, 2015
The weeks following Pesach are always an emotionally charged period in Israel. From celebrating the redemption of the Jewish nation during Pesach, we move on to Yom Hashoah, the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day. We then move on to Yom Hazikaron when Israelis pay tribute to the country’s fallen soldiers in a solemn day of mourning. On this official Memorial Day, Israel also mourns the loss of civilians who were killed as a result of terrorism.
For many of us in Israel, this time period encompasses the price that we pay for being Jews, then and now. We in Israel are defending and dying on the front lines on behalf of every Jew in the world. To date, 23,169 soldiers have died since the establishment of the State of Israel. On this day, we commemorate each and every one of them. We witness how a whole country ceases its work, freezes and remembers those who have given their life to defend Israel.
Yet, that very evening, as the sun begins to set once again, the country undergoes a transformation. The streets are suddenly filled with people celebrating Yom Haatzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. The celebrations continue into the next day. Making this switch so suddenly has always seem to me as odd. Have we forgotten that but moments before, our hearts were heavy with grief for the family and friends that we lost, and continue to lose every year?
Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut are purposely back-to-back for a purpose. The celebrations of Independence Day (Yom Haatzmaut) are incomplete by themselves. We celebrate these two events with the acute awareness that without the incredible sacrifice of those we have lost, there would be no State of Israel. Yom Hazikaron gives our Yom Haatzmaut meaning and perspective. We are forced to confront and remember the terrible price we have had to pay for our existence as a Jewish state, and because of this price, we value that freedom all the more intensely.
Yom Haatzmaut gives Yom Hashoah a greater meaning than ever before. We in Israel are defending and dying on the front lines on behalf of every Jew in the world. For the Jews of the diaspora, Israel has become a very real safe haven for every Jew to escape to and call home, only because he is a Jew. This is the very opposite of the not-so-distant past when entrance to a safe haven was denied only because one was a Jew. Unfortunately, historical events as earth-shattering and history-ending as they seem at the time can eventually fade from the forefront of public consciousness and become memory.
When Holocaust survivors will no longer be around, and when there is no more opportunity to let children and educators hear firsthand testimony of the Holocaust, will the Holocaust be just another event studied in world history classes? With all of the effort that has gone into recording testimonies of the Holocaust be enough to preserve historical memory in terms of the magnitude and uniqueness of the Holocaust? At the recent ceremony at the Yad Vashem Memorial, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke passionately about the failure of today’s democracies to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. In doing so, he directly compared appeasement of the Nazis with contemporary efforts to engage Iran and its nuclear threat via diplomacy.
However, it is likely that much of what passes for liberal and enlightened opinion in both Europe and the United States will dismiss these analogies between the Shoah and the modern day existential threat that Iran poses for the future security of the State of Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu is absolutely right when he points out that talk about the horrors of the Holocaust and vowing “never again” is meaningless when it is bound by policies that essentially empower those who not only deny the reality of the Shoah but also seek the means to perpetrate a new one.
Iran is not Germany, but on a day when the lessons of history should be uppermost in our minds, the burden of proof lies with those defending appeasement of a government that seeks to complete the work Hitler started, not with those lamenting this disgraceful attempt to make a devil’s bargain with a violent hate-filled theocratic regime. We are unable to escape the modern day interconnectedness between Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron, and Yom Haatzmaut.
In Israel, Jews are a sovereign power and enjoy the dignity of Jewish self-government: they are keepers of their own land, speakers of their own language, shapers of their own national destiny. The old-world problems of the Jews—living in segregated conditions, burdened by humiliating legal restrictions, often impoverished and dispirited—are no longer Jewish problems in the modern State of Israel.
The message of the Passover Haggada, the event that began this period of Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut is that there are no shortcuts to freedom. To gain and keep it, you have to be willing to fight for it. You must be will to make the ultimate sacrifice.
As Eric Cohen has recently written: “In this light, the sheer existence of modern Israel is an incredible fact and to some nothing short of a miracle. That from a few fragile settlements, and out of the ashes of the Holocaust, it has in only a few decades become the center of the Jewish people is one of the greatest political achievements in human history. This new Jewish civilization has created a permanent fighting force to defend itself. It survives through military strength, but hardly through that alone. Its real strength resides in the spirit of its people, one of the most optimistic, enterprising, and resilient citizenries on earth.”
MY SOLDIERS' LOVE FOR THEIR COUNTRY IS AMAZING
Israel Hayom, Apr. 20, 2015
This year's Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror, to be observed on Wednesday, will honor the memories of the 67 IDF soldiers who fell during last summer's Operation Protective Edge. One of the war's hardest blows came when seven Golani soldiers were killed when their M113 APC was hit by an anti-tank missile during the battle of Shujaiyya in Gaza. The so-called "Shujaiyya disaster" drew harsh public criticism over the use of an outdated vehicle. But the term "disaster" infuriates Golani Brigade Commander Col. Rasan Alian, who was wounded in the incident.
In a special interview with Israel Hayom, Alian said: "Are we going to call every tank that blows up in a war against Hezbollah — and between us, there will be tanks that are blown up — a 'disaster'? What, a Merkava APC carrying 10 soldiers won't be blown up? What is this?" According to Alian, the Shujaiyya event was "much more extensive" that the attack on the APC: "What is a 'disaster'? Did the APC roll over a bomb in Tel Aviv? Did the APC flip over, killing 10 soldiers during an exercise on the Golan Heights?"
Alian is angry that "every event with a lot of casualties is turned into a disaster. This terminology is messed up." "When you put things under a microscope, you'll always find glitches. War is an event of large numbers. You can't explain that to the families," he said. Alian also discussed last week's "Uvda" ("Fact") news magazine broadcast, which examined the Shujaiyya incident. "In any case, I don't think that we're hiding anything. I think that we're sure enough of ourselves, and with our professional integrity know how to deal with things like this," he said. "What are they telling us that's new? That the APCs weren't armored? These are our soldiers. We sent them into battle and we buried them together."
Turning to the public's knee-jerk impulse to lay blame, Alian said, "We as an army, certainly as army officers, need to provide our men with a 'defensive shield' [a reference to a previous IDF operation] against the civilian expectation that every so-called mistake be considered a failure that someone must pay for. We need to say, 'Guys, this is the reality of war. There will be mistakes. We still prefer commanders who made mistakes, but learned from experience and got better.'" Alian also stressed that he expects "commanders to make professional decisions independent of trends or public sentiments. As far as the focus on the APC, I actually think that the fact that we didn't hide [anything] and are talking with the soldiers makes the reality of the battlefield clearer to people than ever."
The Golani Brigade suffered heavy losses in Operation Protective Edge, with 16 of its fighters killed. Asked about the unusually large number of casualties from the brigade, Alian responded unhesitatingly: "Yes, that's a lot." Despite the hard blows sustained in the Gaza war, the Golani spirit remains strong. The brigade commander said that conversations with soldiers and questionnaires distributed after the operation showed that the soldiers cited two main contributing factors to their strong motivation: one being intense solidarity at all levels — team, division and company — and the other, their love for their country.
"I wasn't surprised by the subject of love for their country," Alian said. "The soldiers said, 'We're connected, we saw the threat to the nation that exists and the rockets flying toward the heart of the country.' The last things they wrote were amazing. So many soldiers wrote this: 'In all of [Israel's] wars, it was others who went. Now it's our turn. We'll do it.'"
Yair Rosenberg
Tablet, Apr. 20, 2015
Tuesday night marks the start of Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day. Across the country, vigils will be held commemorating those lost in war and terrorist attacks. Family members will appear on television and talk about sons, daughters, and spouses in the past tense. It’s a national discourse with a very particular set of collective rituals and tropes. And it’s one that Yaron Edel wants to change.
A little over a year ago, Edel founded an organization called Resisim, taking its name from the Hebrew word meaning both “shards” and “shrapnel.” Its goal: to refocus the Israeli conversation on the living, and not just the dead. It’s a pressing project with nationwide implications. Due to mandatory enlistment, the majority of Israel’s citizens serve in its army. Many have traumatic combat experiences, from watching friends fall under fire to sustaining serious injury. Yet the stories of these men and women—the ones who survived Israel’s wars, rather than perished in them—are rarely told. Instead, Edel explains, “every soldier is called a hero” and expected to play the part, concealing any weakness or hint that they struggle with what they carry.
“If I am a hero, I cannot cry, because I have a job, I have a role,” Edel told me recently. “I cannot have a hard time, because I’m a hero and I’m supposed to deal with those things.” Soldiers are supposed to serve as models of valor and societal success. Some are acclaimed politicians and national leaders, like former generals Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. Others achieve celebrated success after the army, like the entrepreneurs of Israel’s “Start-Up Nation.” But a great many draftees don’t fit these molds and grapple privately with their army experiences, with a silent stoicism masking their inner turmoil.
The purpose of Resisim is to challenge the hero culture of Israeli society and give former soldiers the space to tell their stories without fear of judgment. Toward this end, Resisim runs year-round events where former service members open up about their experiences and encourage others to do so. The organization’s dozens of volunteers collect such testimonies and put them online and work with mental health professionals and artists to craft a more compassionate conversation surrounding military service.
“We feel that we’ve really hit on a kind of blind spot in Israeli society that we need to change,” Edel told me. Tuesday night, they will be running their own alternative Yom Hazikaron program at Jerusalem’s Beit Hansen, seeking to do justice not only to the stories of Israel’s martyrs but its survivors, with all the humanity and frailty that entails…
Itay A. — It was during the first days of Operation Protective Edge, just before we entered the streets of Gaza on foot. The final game of the World Cup was playing that night—Germany versus Argentina. Our entire battalion came to watch it on the half-broken television of our base, huddling together like bees around their hive. I stood slightly apart, farther away from the screen. Throughout the game, I kept looking at one of the officers in the room, a young guy who’d climbed over some sort of container to gain a better angle, over the heads of the taller soldiers. He was sitting above us all, enthusiastically absorbed in the match, smiling from ear to ear. I still can’t understand why, but I could not keep my eyes off of him. He seemed like the happiest guy in the place.
As days passed, our forces started going into Gaza. I still have trouble recalling exactly how the events unfolded. It was on one of our hardest days under fire during the entire war. Voices started coming through the radio. I can’t exactly remember the wording of the official announcement that followed. It provoked a clamor of responses on our side. Somewhere from afar, our guys were shouting emotionally into the radio. Our officer called in: An anti-tank missile had hit our forces, he explained. “I cannot find the head of my soldier!” stuttered a voice on our frequency, which didn’t really register. It was only when dawn finally came that we stopped shooting. Only then did I hear the exact wording of the announcement, and fully understand what had transpired—and my part in it.
On that night, shortly after the antitank missile hit, we depleted our explosives. We were then ordered to fire many, many lighting flares. The instructions were very dry, to the point. We just followed them without thinking. A few hours later, we found out that they had needed the light to find the pieces of the body. In the morning, we understood that our company officer had kept this terrible news to himself to ensure that we’d continue functioning normally. They had needed the light fast, so that other soldiers could go in quickly and gather what they could find without coming to harm. This we realized in the morning.
As you follow instructions like these, you know, in some recess of your mind, that something has happened. But at that moment, you do not allow yourself to think at all about the possibility that someone may have been killed. Instead, you rush to ensure that the next ordnance will be set properly in time. There is tremendous tension in the air. People are screaming from all sides. You find yourself running with a bomb of a few tens of pounds as if it were a feather. As for me, amid the chaos, I began setting bomb after bomb without even bothering to put in earplugs. I just covered my ears with my hands between each breath, each shot, protecting them and hoping to hear the instructions well enough.
It was only at the end of the war that I understood the terrible dimension of this night. Finally, they let us go home. Sitting in front of my computer, reading the latest news, I suddenly recognized one of the faces. It was him. He’d become one of the pictures of the fallen, that officer who watched the game with us and looked like the happiest guy in the world.
When the war ended, I decided that the death of this officer was a circle that I needed to close. We’d all missed his funeral, which took place while were still in battle and could not leave. None of our team knew him personally. I don’t know if I felt guilt, but I definitely felt the need to be connected to him. I asked my officer for information on the memorial, a month after his death, and I went. It seemed very important to go. Alone. I did not speak about it with any of my friends; I never asked them to come along. I had to deal with this on my own. I was the only reservist there. It was the closing of a circle for me. At the cemetery, I learned more about the person he was. I felt like I owed him something, this small measure of respect.
The young officer is buried in the same cemetery where my uncle, who fell during the Yom Kippur War, was buried then. He was interred in the plot next to him. Every year, I go back to visit the tomb of my uncle, and now, his too. In this way, somehow, we now share a story…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Defense Minister Lights Virtual Candle in Honor of Israel's Fallen: Yaakov Lapin, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 20, 2015 —Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon lit a virtual candle on Sunday in honor of Israel’s 23,320 fallen soldiers and civilian victims of hostile action.
23,320 Israeli Flags Being Placed on Graves of Fallen Soldiers: Times of Israel, Apr. 19, 2015 —Military officials across the country are placing 23,320 flags at half-mast on the graves of soldiers, police officers, and other security personnel who have fallen throughout the history of the State of Israel and the Zionist movement, as the state prepares to mark Memorial Day at sundown Tuesday.
Bereaved US, Israeli Families Share a Loss That Bridges Cultures: Lidar Gravé-Lazi, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 21, 2015 —Loss is a shared experience, whether for Israelis or Americans, because to lose a husband or a father is a break for all of life, Nava Shoham, chairwoman of the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization, recently told The Jerusalem Post.
Jewish Soldiers In World War II: Rhona Lewis, Jewish Press, Apr . 17, 2015 —During the Second World War, a million and a half Jewish soldiers fought in the Allied armies, the Partisan units in Eastern Europe, and the anti-fascist underground movements in Western Europe and North Africa.
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