As I’m writing these words, it occurs to me that explanation is necessary. The blue and white Israeli flag, the tattooed hand of an old lady, and the chubby little hand of a baby. Many are familiar with chubby little hands. Less may be familiar with the Israeli flag. Few are familiar with old ladies with tattooed numbers on their hands.

When I was young, Israel was full of those. They weren’t so old back then, they had tattooed numbers on their hands, and it was said: those with the numbers on their hands. Having this number on the hand was the clearest, gruesome, chilling evidence that these people had something in common. They belonged to a certain club. Not the kind of club you might be thinking about. Not an upper class Golf club, not a Yacht club. Not even an exceptional fraternity or sorority, although one might claim that it was precisely that. These people spent time in the darkest places ever to have existed on this planet. And they lived to tell. They were the survivors of Hitler’s death camps.

The German, in their incredible effectiveness and order, kept records of every single person they ever de-humanized, and ultimately killed. Every person who entered the gates of the death camps was branded. Like cattle. They were branded with a serial number. When their turn came to be eliminated, the records could have been set straight, that this once human, professional, family person, Jew – is no longer. Mission accomplished.

But some, against all odds, survived. They rose from the ashes, they picked whatever was left of their humanity, dignity, of their families, of their former lives and former identities, and went to Israel. There, slowly, carefully, with a lot of help, patience and love, some of them were able to rebuild. To put together families, businesses, and a country. Imagine that.

I don’t have a clue who the people in the picture are.  But the old hand, with the tattoo is my grandmother’s, and the chubby little hand is mine. The flag is my country’s. It’s irrelevant that my grandmother is no longer with us, and that I no longer am a baby. Both my grandmother and I have a strong connection to the land of Israel. The three elements in the picture are combined into one big evidence – we’re here to stay.

* The picture was taken by Karen Gillerman-Harel. The picture won the contest “Israel Sixtieth Birthday Flag”. All rights reserved to Karen Gillerman-Harel.

I’m watching BBC’s “coverage” of the Israel Independence Day, and I’m thinking: nothing has changed. They still hate Jews, as they always have. Now they also hate Israelis. I have no other explanation for the fact that they allow thirty seconds to cover the poor Israeli school kids waving the blue and white flags, balancing it out right away with two minutes of an interview with some poor Palestinians who fled their homes sixty years ago, after the Arab plan of finishing off what Hitler has begun had failed.

They then go an announce that the Israeli Independence Day is the Arab anti-celebration called the Catastrophe, or the Naqba, and promise to have “live coverage of the Day-of-Catastrophe”. Live coverage. The BBC is providing live coverage of the Naqba. Unbelievable.

So let me break it to you. Everyone. The Jews may not be great administrators of state. But they are creative, they are resourceful, and they’re not going anywhere. They are here to stay.

To the Arab countries. Yes you with the huge land mass, rich in oil and in oil money. I would suggest the following. It’s time to do something. Time to shell out some money to get the refugee problem resolved. Get those people their dignity. They have been a playing card for you for way too long. They deserve a life. Their lives from sixty years ago can never be re-established. Just like my mother will never go back to Romania to claim her father’s house. And like my father who will never claim his father’s antique and jewelry store, destroyed in 1948 by a Jordanian tank. People caught in the midst of hostile activities get hurt, but they recover and they move on. Living in refugee camps is a shame. People were able to themselves following much much worse disasters. So can you.

To the BBC, I would suggest that when covering the British Independence Day (not sure there is one), they should have live coverage from the non-celebrating countries. The Indian and Pakistani, who are still trying to figure out what the British colonialism had left them to deal with – “creative” splitting of the land, and the population. The French maybe? Various countries and islands in Africa and South America. In fact, the BBC should have live coverage from Leeds. There are many families in Leeds who are not celebrating any British holidays…

You would think CNN is more responsible?  Think again.  In their infinite stupidity, CNN chose to cover the small village of Zippori.  An “agricultural colony” as Ben Wedeman of CNN called it.  There was a live coverage of a steady line of “Young Israeli Palestinians” (I swear he said that), to the ruins of the old Palestinian village of “Safuri”.  But Ben “forgot” to tell that Israeli settlement in Zippori is documented to have had an Israeli Jewish settlement thousands (at least two) years ago..

Let My People Stay!

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