“In their death they willed us life.”
This is the immortal final line of the poem “Should Your Soul Wish to Know” by Israel’s national poet, Haim Nachman Bialik, which has become the link connecting the Memorial Day ceremonies with the festivities of the Independence Day — just like the barrage of colorful fireworks at the end of the “main event” on Mount Herzl ending Memorial Day. In the year that has passed since the last Memorial Day, an additional 92 IDF soldiers “willed us their lives” as did 10 victims of terror attacks. Since 1870, 23,085 IDF soldiers and 2,493 victims of terror attacks have “willed us their lives.”
No one really knows the last wills of those thousands of victims who crowd the country’s military cemeteries. Was their will that we live forever on our sword? Or maybe their last will was that we send their bereaved brothers to risk their lives, too, in an endless war against a people struggling for its freedom and land? Perhaps their bequest instructs us to do all that’s humanly possible to ensure that their children get to live in a peace-loving and not in a territory-loving state? In a democratic state, rather than one that deprives others? In a Jewish state rather than a nationalistic state? Perhaps they willed us reconciliation with our Arab neighbors, recognition of the Palestinian pain and a joint striving for prosperity in our blood-soaked land?
A few of these questions were answered at the alternative Memorial Day ceremony held [on April 14] by Israeli-Palestinian peace organizations at the Tel Aviv exhibition grounds, at the same time as the official ceremonies were being conducted around the country. The spacious auditorium was jam packed with more than 2,000 people. Hundreds more remained in the lobby, watching on giant screens as the bereaved parents and brothers addressed the crowd inside. Palestinian activists from the Forum of Bereaved Families and the Combatants for Peace organization were scattered between the rows. After pleas and pressure by Meretz Party chairperson Zehava Gal-On, Israeli authorities agreed to allow 44 Palestinians to cross the roadblocks from the West Bank to Tel Aviv.
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