Endless Resolve
At the opening of the Yom HaZikaron (the day of remembering the fallen soldiers and terror victims) ceremonies on Sunday evening I attended an event and sat next to an older Jewish lady from New York. She had just immigrated to Israel and noted wryly “this is the last stop, we got nowhere else to go as Jews. I am urging my kids to leave the US and come here. If we have to die, we better do it right here”. And that sums up a sad reality as the tide globally is turning against Jews everywhere. It is a painful realization that is deeply felt in Israel.
On Monday morning while I walked over the central market here in Jerusalem the sirens went off at 11AM at which point everyone stopped doing what they were doing and reflected for two minutes. The moment it was over a fighter jet roared loudly overhead to signify that the Jewish nation is standing strong and is ready to defend itself. Despite the trauma and the many dead, the fight will go on.
Yes, this is a nation that has been visited by death on a regular basis. Nowhere is this clearer at the national cemetery on Mount Herzl which I visited in the afternoon. It is beautifully landscaped along the slope of a large hill with terraces covered by huge pine trees and all the graves are ordered by war or conflict with well-manicured and irrigated flower beds. At the top is where you will find the graves of some of Israel’s great, Yitzhak and Leah Rabin, Shimon Peres and Golda Meir to name a few. Ample space is created for the next generation of leaders and their spouses to be buried here.
However messy and disorganized Israel can be, in some areas there is meticulous attention to design, precision and detail. Interestingly you see that here in memorials, but also in playgrounds, there are many here and they were not done on a budget. The focus on those that went before us and those that are next is something that is seared deep into the Israeli psyche.
It was moving to see all the graves surrounded by families: laying flowers, praying, some singing and making music. I did not take any photos in order to not intrude on these private moments of grief, but the sight of it was something I have never seen before on a resting place. The care, love and incredible sadness for those that were taken too early is heartbreaking.
I wrapped up the visit with an architectural miracle on the same site, the National Memorial for the Fallen, and inside you walk around in a circle with bricks wrapped around the centre of a rotunda. The individual bricks contain the names and dates of the fallen soldiers and they have a small light attached, like a candle. It is a breathtaking piece of design, and so of course are the names of all the fallen ones ordered chronologically. The ones that were killed this very month are already memorialized with their own memorial bricks. The building leaves room for more with a long area of unnamed bricks, and the one thought you cannot shake off is: when will the endless killing be over?
Earlier in the day I walked past the heavily fortified residence of prime minster Benjamin Nethanyahu. Right in front of it is a big tent where the protests for the release of the hostages are conducted and I met up with Roni, a woman who was holding the tent for the day. She lamented Israel’s current leadership, the lack of political will to free the hostages and what she felt was a botched war effort. Yet she noted that all is not lost and that Israel is now entering the phase where a new generation, its third since its foundation, is about to take over and it will be up to them to chart the nation’s course and take on its next wave of enemies. We chatted about the global situation and agreed that the 1990s were some high mark in world stability compared to where we are today. Roni added that Israel has grown phenomenally since then with endless cool restaurants, hip coffee shops, nice cars and growing abundance, but at the same time it is sinking deeper into a hard to reverse conflict.
In practically every family here - many of whom were diminished in size because of the Holocaust to begin with - there are members mourned. Either through war or terror, there are stories of loss and trauma everywhere. And that was the case even before October 7th, so you can probably imagine what things are like now.
But it feeds Israel’s steely resolve. The memorial day ended at 8pm and on that moment turned into Independence Day with a big ceremony on national TV where heroes are honoured, leaders speech and artists perform. It is incredible to see the spectacle on TV, but also to witness the intense pain and suffering that is visiting this nation of only seventy-six years old. But the intense courage to face death in the eye on an almost daily basis and carry on regardless is here. It is unprecedented in human history. Israel lives.
