Comments on: Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day event blasted as ‘insult to citizens’

By: Henry Lowi

Henry Lowi — Sun, 20 May 2012 01:04:13 +0000

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.

By: F Callen

F Callen — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:14:54 +0000

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.

By: Aaron the Fascist Troll

Aaron the Fascist Troll — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:56:41 +0000

Another brief word, after reading some of these comments: God save us from the pacifists.

By: Aaron the Fascist Troll

Aaron the Fascist Troll — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:53:27 +0000

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.

By: Aaron the Fascist Troll

Aaron the Fascist Troll — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:50:39 +0000

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.

By: TLA

TLA — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:55:24 +0000

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?
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Other than the reason I’m thinking of, that is…

By: max

max — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:22:22 +0000

Vicky, you point yourself to the difference between the intimate joint memorial you attended and the one discussed here! That’s exactly my point.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:18:56 +0000

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.
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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.
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And with that, I think I have said all I can say on this subject.

By: max

max — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:10:24 +0000

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.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:48:40 +0000

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.