It’s the eve of Memorial Day in Israel. And attending the ceremony at the Israeli embassy, I was swept at once, unprepared, to the past. To my own past, but most importantly to the nation’s. An old nation, continuously embattled, persecuted and tortured. For thousands of years. Relentlessly, brutally, globally. A surviving nation. A nation who miraculously collected itself from the ashes, from the burial areas, from everywhere to claim it’s tiny, resourceless, wasteland – the country of Israel.
My father was born in Jerusalem, to a family who lived in Jerusalem and in Hebron for generations. My grandmother was born in Turkey, one of the countries that welcomed the deported Jews from Spain in 1492. My mother survived the death camps in Eastern Europe. Where the Germans, the enlightened people of their time, performed the chilling job of actually trying to erase a people.
In 1948 the State of Israel was born. It was little, it had practically nothing – no military, no economy, no resources. All it had back then was a dream. To live peacefully in a place where there’s no persecution, where there’s no antisemitism, where everyone who doesn’t like Jews, simply isn’t there. It was a dream indeed. The day after the first Independence Day Israel was attacked viciously, from all directions, by much stronger, organized, well equipped military forces of its not-so-neighborly neighbors.
Israel survived. The price was thousands of dead. Thousands of people, many of whom only spent weeks, sometimes days in the country. People who have lost everything in the place where they came from. People with inferior or no military training, with little clothes, little equipment and rationed munitions.
Since 1948 until now, sixty years, Israel has collected many inventions, Nobel Laureates, world leading technologies, and dead. Particularly young dead. The best ones. Today, we remembered them all.
When Colonel Yossi Engler-Sher started the ceremony, I felt a knot in my stomach. When he read David’s poem (see below), the poem King David wrote for his best friend Jonathan who was killed in combat, I felt that my breathing was getting out of order. When Orly and Anya sang the “Song of Camaraderie” I was starting to silently weep. When Dorit, my wife, read “The Order of the Fallen”, I believe it was pretty obvious that I was already crying. Not shedding tears. I was crying.
So I asked myself why. Why was I crying? And I had at least a few answers. For one, I remembered. I remembered faces of friends who lost their lives in battle. Friends who shall remain forever young, whose looks and lives are static, and burned in memories, albums and tombstones. I remembered the ones whom I never knew, yet I was indebted to, for giving me the chance to live. Those who lost the chance to reproduce, to whom I owe the joy I get from watching my children grow every day. I was flooded with memories, and they rushed to my eyes in the form of tears.
The other reason was my children. The Israeli Ambassador to China, Mr. Amos Nadai, spoke about his parents’ generation who vowed to make peace, so that his generation doesn’t have to go through the unbelievable experience of losing a child. And failed. And the fact that his generation failed again, and that the next generation, my own, is still frequenting the military cemeteries, vowing that our children will never have to. And then I thought of Guy, my son. And that was a trigger for future memories to rush into my eyes.
And of course, the frustration, and possibly the realization, that a peace in the Middle East is most likely impossible. It’s as if we were sentenced to eternal life with unnatural death built into it. I can’t get over it.
So tomorrow is Memorial Day. Awkwardly, the next day is Israel’s Independence Day. For many families, it’s two days of hell, followed by another 363 days of misery. Death is apparently associated with independence. Does it have to?
Mr. Ambassador, Yossi, Riki, Sharon, Dorit and everyone else whose name I don’t know – thank you putting together this Memorial Day evening. It was unforgettable.
To the departed: I remember you all. I’m grateful to you all. Your departure allowed my presence here. It’s something I remember every day. It won’t help you, or your families. But I thought you’d like to know. If it were to be the other way around, and it could easily have been, I would have liked to know.
King David, in my mind, was the greatest poet that ever lived. He wrote a poem for the death of King Saul, and his son Jonathan, David’s best friend. The English translation can be found here.
יז וַיְקֹנֵן דָּוִד אֶת-הַקִּינָה הַזֹּאת עַל-שָׁאוּל וְעַל-יְהוֹנָתָן בְּנוֹ. יח וַיֹּאמֶר לְלַמֵּד בְּנֵי-יְהוּדָה קָשֶׁת הִנֵּה כְתוּבָה עַל-סֵפֶר הַיָּשָׁר. יט הַצְּבִי יִשְׂרָאֵל עַל-בָּמוֹתֶיךָ חָלָל אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבּוֹרִים. כ אַל-תַּגִּידוּ בְגַת אַל-תְּבַשְּׂרוּ בְּחוּצֹת אַשְׁקְלוֹן פֶּן-תִּשְׂמַחְנָה בְּנוֹת פְּלִשְׁתִּים פֶּן-תַּעֲלֹזְנָה בְּנוֹת הָעֲרֵלִים. כא הָרֵי בַגִּלְבֹּעַ אַל-טַל וְאַל-מָטָר עֲלֵיכֶם וּשְׂדֵי תְרוּמֹת כִּי שָׁם נִגְעַל מָגֵן גִּבּוֹרִים מָגֵן שָׁאוּל בְּלִי מָשִׁיחַ בַּשָּׁמֶן. כב מִדַּם חֲלָלִים מֵחֵלֶב גִּבּוֹרִים קֶשֶׁת יְהוֹנָתָן לֹא נָשׂוֹג אָחוֹר וְחֶרֶב שָׁאוּל לֹא תָשׁוּב רֵיקָם. כג שָׁאוּל וִיהוֹנָתָן הַנֶּאֱהָבִים וְהַנְּעִימִם בְּחַיֵּיהֶם וּבְמוֹתָם לֹא נִפְרָדוּ מִנְּשָׁרִים קַלּוּ מֵאֲרָיוֹת גָּבֵרוּ. כד בְּנוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל-שָׁאוּל בְּכֶינָה הַמַּלְבִּשְׁכֶם שָׁנִי עִם-עֲדָנִים הַמַּעֲלֶה עֲדִי זָהָב עַל לְבוּשְׁכֶן. כה אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבֹּרִים בְּתוֹךְ הַמִּלְחָמָה יְהוֹנָתָן עַל-בָּמוֹתֶיךָ חָלָל. כו צַר-לִי עָלֶיךָ אָחִי יְהוֹנָתָן נָעַמְתָּ לִּי מְאֹד נִפְלְאַתָה אַהֲבָתְךָ לִי מֵאַהֲבַת נָשִׁים. כז אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבּוֹרִים וַיֹּאבְדוּ כְּלֵי מִלְחָמָה
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