Last month, Israel commemorated Memorial Day. While the mainstream media extensively covered official Memorial Day ceremonies, alternative ceremonies were ignored. Also in the roundup: NGO Zochrot publishes a new map showing hundreds of Arab villages that were destroyed between 1948 and 1967, including a tour to Deir Yassin and a "march of return."

Today is not only a day of sadness for fallen Israeli soldiers, it's also one of public declarations that all those bloody conflicts were righteous and necessary - just like the current ones and those that lie ahead.  Maybe in another country, a country that goes to war once in a generation or longer, Memorial Day can be a day strictly of sadness for the soldiers who were killed, and can even be a day to look back and ask: Was that war, or the one before it, really necessary? Did some of these soldiers we're mourning, did this family's…

For the past few years, I’ve been debating within my head the whole standing during the sirens issue. Both on Holocaust Memorial Day, and today for fallen soldiers. Something about the rituals on both days bother me, and at times it gives me the creeps in a “big brother” kind of way. The way a state can make so many citizens stand still for two minutes seems like a bit too much control for my liking. I guess that’s one of the reasons (among many) I decided to attend the alternative Combatants for Peace Memorial Day ceremony last night. Yet,…

From Eilat to Kmehin via Eritrea, the days of yore, and the middle of nowhere Tonight at sundown, the Day of Remembrance for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism will begin. I picked a fitting city in which to pass this evening. Eilat is the one Israeli town that never knew war. In 1948, Palmach units arrived at this stretch of coastline and found it vacant. The forces of the Arab legion withdrew of their own accord, and the minute hamlet of Umm Rashrash was abandoned. The combatants produced a flag using a bed sheet and a small ink jar…

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…

Not kidding. According to Haaretz, the Education Ministry has found a particularly macabre way of imbibing our young ones with respect for their heritage: Each junior high to high school students will adopt "a memorial or the tomb of a soldier fallen in the War of Independence." They will be tasked with keeping the tombs clean, and will have to write a report about the dead person or persons buried under or commemorated by their pet cenotaph as part of their matriculation exam. I'm sorry, I have every respect for families who lost their loved ones to the conflict, but…

Translation from Hebrew: Dimi Reider Motty Fogel, an Israeli journalist who lost his brother, sister-in-law,  nephews and niece in the terror attack on the settlement of Itamar, spoke yesterday at the joint Palestinian and Israeli memorial ceremony organized by Combatants for Peace. He shared his speech with +972. When they offered me to speak at this ceremony, I  almost immediately said yes. But when I began thinking about what I'll want to say, I couldn't come up with anything but battered ideological cliches. I tried to think what was it that made it so difficult, and at some point I…

I stand still during the sirens of Memorial Day here in Israel. Even if I am in my house and no one can see me. Even though I oppose the IDF's policies. Even though I believe every soldier is responsible for his actions and can choose to refuse. While in the West Bank recently, I overheard some Israeli anti-occupation activists talking about how they never stand on Memorial Day. How it is a ridiculous thing to do and would be wrong and hypocritical. I think this is a self-negation of the country's history and a misunderstanding of one's own identity as…