| ‘Thanks to the fallen, we rose; thanks to them, we are alive’ |
At Memorial Day dedication of new monument honoring the dead, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says: „This building is founded on devotion to the people and the land. Its walls are made of courageous spirit. Its dome is made of heroism and sacrifice.”
Israel Hayom Staff
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the new memorial site on Mount Herzl, Sunday | Photo credit: Hillel Meir / TPS  |
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Ahead of the official start of Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism on Sunday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin, and other state officials took part in a ceremony dedicating a new national memorial edifice on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
The new memorial hall, which was unveiled last Thursday, features the name of each one of the 23,544 fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism in Israel’s history. Each name is inscribed on a separate brick, and the bricks are arranged by the dates of death.
Throughout the year, the names of those whose anniversaries are approaching will be illuminated by electronic candles. In the coming days, the site will be open to bereaved families only. It is later scheduled to open to the general public.
Speaking at the dedication ceremony Sunday, Rivlin said: „‘The world is full of remembering and forgetting, like sea and land. Sometimes the memory is the solid, existing land, and sometimes the memory is like the sea that covers everything.’ So said my teacher, the poet Yehuda Amichai. Today, as the eve of Memorial Day approaches, here at the memorial hall, memory becomes tangible. It is like the sea that covers everything.
„Memory is not just remembering the past. The secret of the power of the Israeli memory is its continuity. It’s a memory that goes from the past to the present to the future.”
Rivlin continued that „Jewish and Israeli memory heals and joins the past, the present, and the future, giving us courage — as individuals, as a state, and as a people. The hall of memory is not just a place where memories from the past rest. In this hall of memory, we promise not only to commemorate the past, but with the same determination, consistency, love, and hope, to create the future.
„There is no other country that has learned to connect so precisely and carefully the personal and the national bereavement. That’s exactly what it is. Like the bereavement itself, this hall, too, remembers everyone. Here, in the hall of eternity, the people of Israel will come together. Here, the dead will speak to the living, and the living with the dead.”
Netanyahu took the podium next, saying, „Starting today, this hall of memory will become one of the symbols of the rebirth of Israel. This building is founded on devotion to the people and the land. Its walls are made of courageous spirit. Its dome is made of heroism and sacrifice. And it is cemented together by memory.”
The prime minister quoted Haim Druckman, a combat soldier in the Golani Brigade who was killed in the first Lebanon War in 1986, as saying, „My death will be in defending our country and our homeland, and then you will know that I didn’t die. I am living and accompanying you throughout your lives, because you are fulfilling what I aspired to accomplish in my life.”
Netanyahu continued: „While we remember the fallen soldiers of Israel’s wars, it is they who remind us who we are and what our purpose is. Love for the homeland, heroism and devotion, a shared fate, a flame that will never be extinguished. Even when there will be no families, when there will be no single person who remembers the fallen men and women, a candle will be lit here on the anniversary of their death. This initiative wonderfully combines personal and national memories, and ensures that the memory of the fallen will be forever engraved upon our hearts.”
Netanyahu expressed his thanks to IDF soldiers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, calling them all „brothers in arms.”
„Thanks to them, we rose, and thanks to them, we are alive,” he said.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman also spoke, saying, „In the moment of truth, Israel does not have the support of the international community. The world must block hypocritical, anti-Israel diplomatic initiatives, some of which are even anti-Semitic.”
He said that „even now, like every other hour of every other day, IDF soldiers and the rest of the security forces are operating in the air, on land, and at sea to guarantee the security of Israel’s citizens. They are doing so with determination and courage, along our borders and sometimes far from them, prepared to thwart any threat and put their hand on anyone who is plotting to attack us.”
Stressing the lack of international support, Lieberman said, „Israel must know how to defend itself against any threat. I still hope, especially given the recent terrorism incidents in Europe and elsewhere in the world, that we still might see a change in the international community’s one-sided attitude toward Israel.”
Lieberman said that Israel wants to „remember, every hour of every day, the names and the lives of those who gave their lives to establish, protect, and ensure the security of the State of Israel.”
The new monument was unveiled by the Defense Ministry last Thursday. It is the first and only site in Israel to bring together all the names of the fallen in one location.
Each morning, the chief cantor of the IDF will conduct a memorial ceremony for the individuals who died on that day of the year.
Aryeh Muallem, head of the Families and Commemoration Department in the Defense Ministry, said, „In its 69th year, the State of Israel has gained a national asset of deep historical significance that symbolizes the fulfillment of the directive the nation took upon itself: ‘Remember them all.’ Every gravestone planted in the earth from now on will also be added to the wall of names that surrounds the hall. A brick will be inscribed with the fallen’s name and date of death, a brick that will encapsulate the obligation to remember that every casualty has a name and behind every name there is a story.”
