In response to a joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony organized by “Combatants for Peace” in the Tel Aviv Harbor, Naomi Enoch, chair of the state-owned company that operates the harbor, said that the ceremony was an outrage, and condemned its participants. In the last year, 67 Palestinians were killed by Israel, and four Israeli citizens were killed by Palestinians.
“Combatants for Peace,” a movement of Israeli and Palestinian ex-fighters devoted to reconciliation, ending the occupation and peace, holds a ceremony each year on the eve Israeli Memorial Day in commemoration of everyone who died in the conflict. This year, the event was held in the Tel Aviv Harbor, a trendy outdoor mall full of shops and restaurants and run by a state-owned company called “Otzar Mif’aley Yam” (Treasure of Sea Initiatives). When Enoch, chair of the company’s board, heard about this, she released the following statement:
Memorial Day is meant to honor the memory of Israeli casualties in war and terror attacks. As a government company, we believe that any attempt to link the memory of fallen IDF soldiers with Palestinians who have been killed is an insult to the citizens of this state, to the memory of the fallen and to the bereaved families. It is a pity that the organizers of this ceremony do not feel compassion for residents of Israel, its citizens and the bereaved families, and choose to desecrate the holiness of the fallen. Unfortunately, the event is held within a private business in the harbor, and the company has no way of stopping it. The only thing we can do is show our discontent with those groups who consider themselves ‘humane’ yet choose to kick the values on which they were brought up, ignoring the feelings of the public on this holy day.
It should be noted that Enoch’s appointment came as a result of political pressure by Minister of Transportation Israel Katz (Likud), whose office is in charge of the harbor company. In spite of Enoch’s statement, which was backed by several Likud MKs, the ceremony took place as planned, but was met with a demonstration by right wing extremists.
Demonstrations against the joint memorial service (JC / Activestills)
[UPDATE: The sign in the center reads "Leftists - out!" The sticker on the sign and on the clothes of people around the sign read "Kahane was right," referring to Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of an outlawed extreme right-wing group and supporter of ethnic cleansing.]
According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, 16,774 Israeli soldiers have died since the founding of the state in 1948, including 50 in the last year. As these deaths include those resulting from accidents, disease, suicide (in the last decade, an average of 30 soldiers committed suicide each year), suicide bombings and combat – I asked the IDF to send a breakdown of the causes of death of these 50 soldiers. The request was denied.
According to B’Tselem, since last year’s Memorial Day, not a single soldier was killed by Palestinians. Four Israeli civilians were, however, including one minor. In the same time frame, 67 Palestinians were killed by Israeli armed forces, including 26 non-combatants – of which seven were minors.
For additional original analysis and breaking news, visit +972 Magazine's Facebook page or follow us on Twitter. Our newsletter features a comprehensive round-up of the week's events. Sign up here.
Daniel
Just to be clear, there were only a small number of (17 by the time the event was over) people protesting the 1000+ people who attended the very well put together event.
Shua Frazer
While I appreciate 972 reporting on the ridiculous comments by Mrs. Enoch, I wish there was more on the joint ceremony itself.
Matt Stevens
Haggai
I’ve been following you’re posts for a while and think they are generally good. fairly accurate although sometimes subjective- It’s fine to post this stuff but make sure you post both sides, not just posting articles of what Israelis are doing wrong.
972 claims to be reporting news in Israel and Palestine but the truth is that it only reports what Israeli’s do wrong. Trying posting both sides brother
F Callen
Are there corresponding events in the PA/Hamas territories, where Arabs and Israelis hold joint ceremonies?
XYZ
This is a good example of how the so-called “peace camp” keeps shooting itself in the foot. They carry out an action that is sure to outrage the average Israel citizens, whose support is needed by the “peace camp” in order to get Israeli concessions, withdrawals, prisoner releases. Spit in their face, show how you have contempt for their feelings, stomp on their feet and show them how you can consideration for what they think, the sacrifices they made and such.
Keep up the good work!
XYZ
Correction-
I meant to say how you of the “peace camp” have NO consideration for the feelings of the average Israeli.
aristeides
If the “average Israeli” considers gestures of peace to be spitting in their faces, they don’t deserve consideration.
.
That guy with the hate plastered on his face – deserves no consideration.
.
24 Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?
25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
26 And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
max
Interesting claim (or is it just insinuation?) that Palestinian ex-fighters attended the ceremony in Tel Aviv… does it mean that ex-terrorists (at least by Israel’s view) were allowed to attend, or sneaked into the party?
It would be more credible if this were done in Ramallah. But maybe it couldn’t happen there…
Paul
It would be good if you translated Hebrew writing in pictures for those who can’t read Hebrew.
I beleve this one translates as “Leftists Out” with the roundel saying “Kahana was correct” (referring to Meir Kahana, ultra-right wing ‘rabbi’).
Vicky
I observed a joint memorial event last year, conducted in Arabic and Hebrew. (It was not organised by Combatants for Peace, but by Parents’ Circle.) The lasting impression that I have of that event was the sheer and palpable gentleness in the room.
.
Outside the walls of that room, the focus of the memorial commemorations was the glory of the country and the nobility of the sacrifice, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. The same formula is seen at memorial events in other countries, including my own. It’s all flags and fanfare.
.
So many people in that room had lost someone, and their loss didn’t look anything like how it was being represented outside. It reminded me of an interview with Harry Patch, a British veteran of the First World War, in which he described a meeting with a German veteran: “A nice chap. A pacifist, same as me. Why did they die, those millions of men?” Reading that interview, I began to wonder if asking this question might not be a better method of memorial than watching the troops march through London on Remembrance Day, followed by hearing all the political speeches (often designed to justify ongoing military exploits). And it wasn’t lost on me that it was a meeting with someone who had been trying to kill him eight decades previously that had brought out that question in Mr Patch.
.
The idea that joint memorial events shouldn’t happen is often rooted in the idea that Palestinians die just because they’re terrorists, or because they were used as shields by terrorists, or because the IDF made a tragic one-off mistake. Even talking about their grief is an insult, a spit in the face. If they die, it’s all their own fault, and don’t dare to suggest that they’re worth crying over. On the flip side, Palestinians may be hostile to such events because soldiers who died while enforcing military occupation are remembered alongside dead children. Some Palestinians whom I respect greatly see this as a form of normalisation.
.
After thinking it over, I disagree with them. In a place where your own loss is routinely denied or dismissed (as with Palestinians) or subsumed into a narrative of national pride and sacrifice (as with the soldiers who committed suicide), there are few things sharper and more subversive than grief. Grief brings the focus back to one simple fact: someone died, and now their loved ones have to go on without them.
.
Grief can be a source of clarity and love even in the cases where you mourn the death of non-civilians. A while ago Sinjim linked to the poem ‘Revenge’ by the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, which expresses that knowledge while not shying away from the painful ambivalence that it creates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrDLT5Ae-VY
.
A few days ago I learned that my brother will soon be deployed to Afghanistan. This is his third overseas tour. I realised when he was sent to Iraq that if (God forbid) he were killed, I couldn’t expect anyone in that unfortunate country to feel sorry over the loss of his life. Now I hope that if anything happens to him, people will find it in themselves to feel sorry anyway – not because his actions deserved it, but because he’s David.
.
I wish we had a world where that was enough. Where it’s considered more outrageous and alien NOT to share in another person’s grief than to try and enter into it. If this were true, we would probably have far fewer occasions for grief in the first place.
Devin
Max: if somebody fights for her/his rights is terrorist all your statement are correct. If you are honest first learn the meaning of terrorist, then write down your answer to this useful debate. If you do not have any answer to this rightful debate, please let us to learn from this debate. Thanks for your consideration.
zayzafuna
this ceremony is a fraud. How can victims and oppressors party together?
aristeides
In the US, veterans from both sides of our civil war would march in the same memorial parades. Pearl Harbor commemorations have been joint observances for years, and D-Day commemorations have now had joint observance.
.
In Vietnam, a conflict far more cruel and bloody than that of Israel/Palestine, joint memorials have begun to be held.
.
It depends on whether you believe in peace and common humanity, or racism and xenophobia.
Eitan
What an insignificant story. On Yom HaZikaron the lead story of a magazine about Israel is this minor protest? And even if you disagree with the protesters it is very prejudicial to call them right-wing extremists without providing any information that shows it. Perhaps if the author had translated the sticker in the middle of the sign (the sticker appears to be worn by others in the photo) and told us it read “Kahane Tzadak” (Kahane was right, referring to the late Kach MK) then it would be a passible article. But the author neglected to do this. Is it so unreasonable to expect that Israeli memorial day should recognize, first and foremost, Israeli fallen soldiers. Just like how on ANZAC day Australian and New Zealander soldiers are memorialized (and not anyone else). All civilian deaths are a tragedy but there is no reason that Palestinian civilians need be mourned on the same day as fallen Israeli soldiers and Israeli victims of terror.
Shua Frazer
@Aristeides:
Thanks for those great examples! You were able to put my gut feeling into words when you wrote that “depends on whether you believe in peace…or racism and xenophobia.”
I’d love to see more ceremonies like this. I’m aware some folks might see them as “normalization” and therefore oppose them, and that’s their prerogative. But for what it’s worth, I think it’s a great idea. Like it or not there’s a shared history and we may as well deal with it together.
Kolumn9
This ceremony is not a gesture of peace. The organizers are spitting in the face of every Israeli that lost family members to Arab terrorists because that is what this day is meant to commemorate. In holding the event the organizers are equating between the suffering of the parents of those that died from being blown up on a bus and the parents of those whose children carried out the act of terrorism. The holding of the event on this day makes it a political act and an insult to Israel. This event is disgusting.
.
This isn’t like a ceremony commemorating the dead of the Civil War or the Vietnam War. This would be more like a ceremony commemorating the common suffering of those that lost family members on 9/11 when the towers went down and those that lost family members because they were flying the plane. And on top of everything it is like holding that kind of despicable ceremony on 9/11 itself.
.
XYZ is right. The left through these kinds of events and notions is only driving itself further into isolation and irrelevance.
Aaron the Fascist Troll
This “gesture of peace” goes against the whole meaning of Memorial Day (in Israel or in any other state). Memorial Day isn’t essentially about expressing sorrow that these people were killed. That’s part of it, but if that were all of it, we would include civilian victims as well – as some misguided people want to do.
The essence of Memorial Day is to commemorate the sacrifice. It’s as much about gratitude as grief, maybe even more. Intentionally or not, this kind of “gesture of peace” subverts the whole essence of Memorial Day.
Greg Pollock
I have a fantasy. That when a major leader, such as Bush II, goes to war he also requests a performance of Benjamin Britten’s Dies Irae from his War Requium, based on the poetry of Wilfred Owen, who died in battle during WW I just days before he was to be released. In the Dies Irae, Owen’s poetry on long range cannons (of the day) is sung: something like “pluck them from us when their terrible work is done” (way paraphrase). But George II had tears in his eyes for other reasons when declaring war.
.
Vietnam went so badly (a million dead) that, long after, it is possible for those of both sides to grieve the causes of violence. That is also, I think, what this memorial is about.
.
Aaron, the processes of violence transcend our own families–or nation. I really think it will be to the advantage of you and yours to have people who know this; for, in war, both sides are right.
.
I find it strange that a government corporation would condemn a private act, on private property. But the key point is that the event could not be stopped.
.
If you ever want peace, you will have to combine the naratives of Independence and Nakba. When, not if, you do that, you will have moved civilization forward.
.
I endorse Vicky’s sentiments entirely.
Kolumn9
Greg, the narratives will not be combined for a very long time and if you expect that to happen before peace then there will certainly be none. The two narratives are completely mutually exclusive and either side would be suicidal to endorse or accept the other’s side until there is some kind of resolution. Civilization moving forward will have to wait if it is waiting on this. I also doubt we would agree what civilization is, whether it can ever move forward or whether any group or person should give a rat’s ass which way it goes.
.
Vietnam has been over for 40 years and was purely a military conflict on the American side. Don’t even try to compare the two events. It only makes you sound ignorant.
Haggai Matar
Matt – you say that I post “of what Israelis are doing wrong”. I would say that I try to post about what ISRAEL (as opposed to Israelis) is doing wrong, and about protests againsts the things it does. I think Israelis do amazing things, like the J14 protest which I covered extensivly (mainly in Hebrew, before I joined +972, but also contributing guest stories about it here).
.
F Callen – Yes.
.
XYZ – I disagree. Insisting on rememberring all the death and the sorrow brought upon all peoples of this land is a beautiful and humane thing to do. Yes, it doesn’t follow your standard nationalistic notions, but so what?
.
And to many others who asked – my mistake, I should have translated the signs, and I’m doing so now.
Kolumn9
Aaron, the official name of the day is:
יום הזיכרון לחללי מערכות ישראל ולנפגעי פעולות האיבה
so, it does include the victims of terrorism..
Haggai, no, it is not humane for me to feel sorry for a person that died trying to kill me. It is not humane for me to commiserate with the deaths of people who died trying to destroy me. Likewise, I don’t mourn dead Nazis. Should we be morning those too on Yom haShoah in an alternative ceremony? Would that too be humane? My god. Are you people human or some kind of pre-programmed robots that you don’t realize that these differences matter?
Haggai Matar
The questions is, kolumn9, not if you feel sorry for people who died trying to kill you (which is not what the ceremony is about), but if you can feel sorry for civilians and children who were killed by Israel as part of its campaign to hold on to occupied territories and a military regime.
sh
I’m not worried about the guy with the hate plastered all over his face, Aristeides. He was entitled to demonstrate at the event and the police made sure he and his friends stayed behind the barrier they had set up to separate him from the crowd pouring into the space in which it took place. I’m worried about “Naomi Enoch, chair of the state-owned company that operates the harbor”.
.
Eitan, Naomi Enoch’s stance, not the protest, was the subject of Haggai’s post. The protest photo, with Kahane Tsadak as decoration answered your complaint about lack of information proving they were right-wing extremists and the civilian deaths that took place during our campaign for independence are inseparable from it.
.
Vicky, the event last year, like this year, was co-organized by Combatants for Peace. This year I thought of you (hadn’t yet read you last year) and the normalization question when Moira Jilani, wife of Ziad
http://extension.missouri.edu/p/ipm1007-55
spoke so soberly and movingly this Tuesday night.
.
XYZ, you of the settler camp have NO consideration for the feelings of Israelis who think you are ruining any chance of peace and integration here.
Paul, yes. “Kahane was right”ists may be in government as we speak, but as far as the Israeli public is concerned, they’re still not 100% kasher.
.
Max, very few Palestinian ex-fighters attended the ceremony in Tel Aviv because most of them were prevented from coming, locked as they were into the West Bank, as has been the norm for the past 20 years or so for all of Israel’s holidays and holydays.
.
Zayzafouna, the ceremony was not a party.
.
K9 and Aaron, Vicky said this in her post: “I wish we had a world where ….. it’s considered more outrageous and alien NOT to share in another person’s grief than to try and enter into it.” The essence of memorial day is not gratitude but to remember and mourn the dead. As Haggai demonstrates, they have many more than we, many of theirs who died were not trying to kill anyone and we are responsible for most of them. The gratitude comes the next day and even that wouldn’t suffer from a dose of reality.
aristeides
Kolumn – the joint commemorations I speak of in Vietnam are between the two Vietnamese sides. Although I have certainly seen accounts of private reconciliation activities between former US troops and Vietnamese.
.
But the Zionist commenters here make it clear that their purpose it to wallow in their eternal victimization and draw a line through humanity between “us” and “not-us.” No wonder peace is impossible with such people.
Vicky
Aaron, you are right that a lot of countries make their memorial days into commemorations of sacrifice and gratitude. Not for nursing home staff who work fourteen-hour shifts on minimum wage, and then go home late anyway because an elderly resident with dementia has woken up scared and wants a cup of tea. For soldiers. We end up glorifying blood and behaving as though readiness to kill other people and maybe get killed yourself in the process is the foundation of society. Then this idea gets exploited for political purposes: civilians who died in suicide bombings, occupation soldiers who were killed by the armed resistance, and soldiers who committed suicide are all swept up together in one big national epic called The Sacrifice, their individual stories blotted out. Questioning this idea is seen as an insult to people who died, and daring to remember anybody who isn’t an official part of the cast is verging on treason. Kolumn9 has outlined the only permissible role for dead Palestinians and their grieving loved ones in this grand epic: Nazis and Nazi sympathisers. A sensitively planned joint memorial commemoration does have the ability to undermine all of this: the glorification of blood, the use of dead people to fuel nationalist spirit, the disgusting dehumanisation of Palestinians and their grief. Good.
.
SH, the event I attended last year was in Jerusalem, and it seems to have been a smaller affair than this Tel Aviv one. I don’t recall seeing Combatants for Peace mentioned, but I could be wrong. Were you also there? P.S. That link leads to ‘Practical Weed Science for the Field Scout’. Unless it’s some subtle metaphor that I’m not catching, I don’t think you meant to put that in your post.
sh
Vicky, sorry. First the correct link to the Moira Jilani story http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/latimes0029C.html
( >//<, excuses for the muddle; that was a stray from a brief excursion into wild garlic, no subtle metaphor intended).
.
Second, I was talking about last year's commemoration in Tel Aviv, which was also packed out. I didn't know about the one in Jerusalem. As someone from the Parents Circle who admitted he often lost hope said this year, if even only a fraction of the people who came to this event were to become active in the organizations that organize it, it would be cause for renewed optimism.
Kolumn9
Haggai, Vicki, Sh, the whole point is that the ceremony doesn’t differentiate between the families of dead Palestinian suicide bombers and dead Israeli civilians. The whole point as all of you point out is to demean the Israeli dead and the suffering of their families through a political event that DELIBERATELY and METHODICALLY attempts to equate a dead suicide bomber and his victims. You can argue for common humanity and compassion all you want, but it is you, not I that lack empathy when justifying such a ceremony to a grieving nation ON THIS DAY. It is the timing of the event that causes it to be the horrifyingly disgusting spectacle that it is. Had it been done on a different day it would just be a matter of bad taste.
.
I notice none of you even bothered to tackle the analogy I posed with mourning Nazis on Holocaust Memorial Day, except to dismiss it. The reason you have done this is because you have no answer, none whatsoever, because the analogy is valid, you know it, and the only way you can deal with it is by ignoring it. The Palestinians can grieve or celebrate suicide bombers as they do, but for a group of Israelis to organize an event on this day that explicitly accepts them as ‘victims’ equal to those they killed is a complete and total disgrace.
Kolumn9
Also, NO, this ceremony isn’t about mourning dead Palestinian civilians. The ceremony is about not differentiating between dead Israelis and dead Palestinians, which includes dead Israeli civilians and dead Palestinian suicide bombers. It is precisely this lack of distinction that the ceremony is meant to promote on a day when the rest of Israel mourns Israeli deaths. If any of you were honest you would admit this rather than justifying it by pretending that this ceremony is about mourning Palestinian civilians.
Vicky
The Palestinian civilian death toll from 2000 onwards is six times higher than the Israeli civilian death toll. I don’t think grief can be quantified, and I would never tell an Israeli who had lost a loved one in a suicide bombing that his grief was less painful just because his loss fell into a numerically smaller group. The point I want to make by bringing up this comparison is that the number of Palestinian civilians who have died outstrips the number of suicide bombers by thousands. Yet you applied ‘Nazis’ as a blanket label to all Palestinians who have ever lost anyone, never mind the civilian status of the victims. You talk about Palestinians ‘grieving and celebrating suicide bombers’ – no mention of civilians who died, and how their families mourn. Do these people exist for you at all?
.
I know Palestinians who object to such memorial events because they don’t want dead Palestinian children such as Abir Aramin to be remembered alongside dead occupation soldiers who killed children like Abir Aramin. Do you find the idea of combatants and Palestinian victims being mourned together equally offensive? Are you able to sympathise at all with how Palestinians who oppose such events feel about this?
.
As for grief, I see little grief in militarised pomp and fanfare, especially when it’s used politically to justify present-day military exploits. That to me is what is in bad taste. Not a group of people who are sick of violence and have chosen to commemorate their loved ones’ deaths by deciding that they want nothing more to do with further violence.
Kolumn9
Vicky, I agree with the Palestinians who object to such memorial events. From their point of view as well this is a travesty. As would for example be a Nakba day celebration that chose to include the commemoration of Jews that were massacred or forced out of Gush Etzion or Jews that were forced out of the Arab countries. There must be room for commemorating from within one’s own narrative and events like this one are insensitive and inspire only disgust in most people.
.
I have never applied Nazi as a blanket statement for Palestinians. Now you are making things up to justify your inability to argue against the analogy. I have pointed out precisely that this event does not differentiate between Palestinian civilians and Palestinian suicide bombers. This ceremony is the precise equivalent of a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony that would include grief for dead Nazis, even if it also commemorated the deaths of German civilians. Nonetheless, such a ceremony would be disgusting and I am relatively certain none of you would be so insensitive as to suggest it and you know how disgusting it would be to the survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants. Yet here you justify the exact same thing because such an event aligns with your politics. This is despicable.
aristeides
One day, Kolumn, there will be such ceremonies, and people will shake their heads in wonder that anyone would object.
Vicky
Kolumn9, you made no mention of Palestinian civilians in your earlier comments and you spoke exclusively about suicide bombers, even though they account for a miniscule fraction of the death toll. When you do that, it’s not unreasonable for people to assume that you are casting the thousands of Palestinian dead into that bucket.
.
This is not the same as remembering dead Nazis and Shoah victims in the same ceremony. There is a dedicated day for Holocaust remembrance, on which nobody other than its victims are honoured. But as you’ve pointed out, Israeli memorial day commemorates combatants and non-combatants alike. The combatants died with blood on their hands, yet you don’t object to having them commemorated alongside suicide bombing victims even though they were responsible for racking up that civilian death toll. A dead sniper who shot an unarmed civilian is remembered alongside a teenager from a bus bombing who had never hurt anybody in her life. Yet you don’t compare that soldier to a Nazi and say he has no right to be remembered.
.
One of the callous justifications that supporters of suicide bombing used was that there is no such thing as an innocent Israeli, because they would all grow up to be soldiers. (And before anyone makes further Nazi comparisons, I will point out here that while this is unspeakably cruel, it is not the same as orchestrating a genocide against a people on the basis of their race.) This is what happens when you let your political views demarcate the extent to which you are prepared to be compassionate: you don’t see people as individuals any more, they become categories, and you kill them based on that. I refuse to let those categories apply when people have died, so I don’t mourn ‘Israeli death’; I mourn human death. Death doesn’t carry a passport. I’ve worked with enough severely traumatised and grieving people to see that.
.
Combatants for Peace says in its mission statement that it was founded by people who have unequivocally renounced violence. Going to such an event does not mean that you endorse what every single one of the dead has ever done, quite the opposite. (I’m a total pacifist, and if attending a memorial event for soldiers meant that I was somehow blurring the boundary between being a combatant and being a civilian, I would never be able to attend any memorial event ever.) The people who created the organisation are firm in their conviction that to kill is a terrible thing, so they are hardly going to sweep away all distinctions between those who killed and those who didn’t. They and the grieving people who attended the event have tried to respond to death with an event that will enrich life now, seeing this as the best gesture of remembrance they can make. (Heavily militarised commemorations in Israel and other countries sometimes trumpet ‘never again’, but where they are concerned ‘never again’ just means making sure that you have bigger and better guns for next time.) This commemoration is not just about the dead; it’s about the living, and how to use your own pain to become a more loving person towards others. Comparing that to militarised memorial commemorations that glorify death, I can think of no better way to grieve.
max
Vicky, they know and you know that casting this performance where they did, in the middle of all those that think and feel differently, was an act of spite and that without the aggressive response half the fun would have been spoiled.
This isn’t about the idea itself – which I find distasteful, but who am I to decide for others – but about the set-up.
Vicky
Max, I think that the first concern of grieving people and people who have made a conscious choice to renounce violence is unlikely to be spite. You are assuming that public opinion must be at the centre of their thoughts. I think their dead are more likely to occupy that place.
.
Memorial day in Israel is marked by a heavy focus on the military and there are people who want an alternative way to commemorate loss. That’s all. As I said in my first comment, the gentleness in the (crowded) room where the Jerusalem joint memorial was held last year was almost tangible. It was quite an extraordinary atmosphere, one that I will never be able to put into words. Try and put some more faith in people, and you might be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
.
And with that, I think I have said all I can say on this subject.
max
Vicky, you point yourself to the difference between the intimate joint memorial you attended and the one discussed here! That’s exactly my point.
TLA
I read in the news somewhere that there was yet another rocket attack on Israel during the celebrations of the Independence Day there… Couldn’t find anything about it here… Any reason why the horrible genocidal acts of terror are so consistently ignored by this site?
.
Other than the reason I’m thinking of, that is…
Aaron the Fascist Troll
Kolumn9, thanks for the correction. Yes, you guys won the Memorial Day argument, and civilian victims are now commemorated as well. But it’s still wrong; there’s no honor or sacrifice in getting blown up by a bomb while you’re sitting in a cafe. Commemorating enemy fatalities would make it even wronger. If it’s just about grief, let’s just commemorate everyone who ever died. One grieves as much for a victim of cancer as for a victim of an enemy bullet.
Aaron the Fascist Troll
A lot of commenters are overlooking the fact that PALESTINIANS ARE ALREADY COMMEMORATED ON ISRAEL’S MEMORIAL DAY. Those Palestinians in the army, the border patrol, etc., who died serving the State of Israel are publicly commemorated on that day. That includes substantial casualties from certain Palestinian sectors, such as Druze and Bedouin.
Aaron the Fascist Troll
Another brief word, after reading some of these comments: God save us from the pacifists.
F Callen
Haggai, what are these joint ceremonies held in PA/Hamas territories (or even further afield in say Syria, Egypt, Jordan…). If they exist they are highly significant and should be publicised.
Henry Lowi
I participated in the event on April 25th at Hangar 11. I counted the seats: 3000. It was a very full house. It was also very moving. The handful of lost souls protesting outside do not deserve more than a footnote.
Where would it be possible to find a video of the ceremony, or of any of the presentations?
They should be broadcast far and wide.