Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem on Israel’s Memorial Day, which began on Monday evening, said the day is one of “heavy sorrow” but also the “anchor of unifying togetherness.”
“The people remember. The people salute. The people are deeply grateful to the sons and daughters, thanks to whom our existence is assured. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: ‘For a people in Zion dwelt in Jerusalem, weep and do not weep,’ ” the prime minister said at a ceremony of Yad LaBanim, the official group commemorating Israel’s fallen.
Among those attending the ceremony were the speaker of the Knesset, the president of the Supreme Court, Israel’s chief rabbis, and the mayor of Jerusalem.
Netanyahu said the loss of a loved one always stays with the families of those who have fallen. He recalled how, after 50 years, his family still longs for his elder brother, Jonathan, who died leading the 1976 raid on Entebbe.
The prime minister spoke of Heli Wolfstall, who lost her son Ariel, an armored battalion officer, in the recent war. Wolfstall went to Poland as part of a group, ‘Witnesses in Uniform,’ with IDF company commanders.
Before the journey, Netanyahu related how she collected stones from the cemetery where her son was buried and took them to Treblinka, Birkenau, and the cemetery in Krakow, where soldiers of the Jewish Brigade, which fought the Nazis in Europe, were buried.
“There, in Krakow, Heli and IDF officers placed the stones of the Land of Israel on the graves of the fighters during the Holocaust. The officers sought to express their deep feeling that they were the successors of their predecessors in the same mission to ensure the eternity of Israel,” Netanyahu said.
Quoting Wolfstall, he said: “My family and I have paid the price of revival, and our hearts are torn, but this journey illustrated to me what would have happened if we hadn’t had the Israel Defense Forces. Instead of complete helplessness, today we have the strength and the spirit to fight back against our enemies.”
Netanyahu added: “This is precisely the difference between the reality of our life in terrible exile and the life of revival on the land of Israel. In contrast to the recent past, today we have a home, and we must guard it with all our might. The 25,648 fallen soldiers of Israel’s wars, joined by the fallen of the last few days on the Lebanese front, Barak Kalfon and Lidor Porat, are the foundation of our independence.”
He said that in every generation, there are those who rise up to destroy the Jewish people. Iran would have done so with nuclear bombs if Israel hadn’t struck first. “The names Natanz, and Fordow and Isfahan—these death sites would have joined the names of the death camps Auschwitz, Birkenau and Treblinka. But we acted and crushed the murder plot.”
Netanyahu described the current generation of fighters as the “generation of victory.”
Israel’s superiority over Iran has been proven, he said, as its flag flies from positions in Gaza to Mount Hermon on the Golan Heights, and its planes control the skies over Iran.
“We are not done yet,” he said. “But the world already knows our determination to defend ourselves; to protect not only ourselves, to protect humanity as well, from barbaric fanaticism.”
