On Oct. 11, 2023, five days after the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel, Itay Sagi and his unit in the Israeli military went into Gaza to retrieve bodies of Israelis whom the terror organization killed. The unit was ambushed, three soldiers were killed and Sagi was gravely hurt.
“My body and my soul were wounded,” Sagi told about 900 people, who filled the Moorish revival sanctuary at Park East Synagogue, an Orthodox congregation in Manhattan, on Monday for a commemoration of Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day.
“The images are engraved in my heart forever. Today, I see those who fell before my eyes, who gave their lives so we could be here,” he told the audience. “We are burning inside with hate, with longing, with infinite sadness.”
That internal fire can be converted into a “superpower,” he told those assembled.
“Since Oct. 11, every day is a memorial day for me,” he said. “I am burning and I am sad and I am angry, but I choose to live. I choose to be happy for my friends who fell, because only this way can we commemorate them in a way that will honor them. We must not give up.”
It is essential to go on loving and laughing in honor of “those friends who fell, so we can build something better,” he said.
“Overcome the pain with love of life,” he added. “We must choose life every single day for them and because of them and make their memory blessed.”
Ofir Akunis, Israeli consul general in New York, expressed both emotion and defiance in the face of grief in his remarks at the synagogue, which was the site of anti-Israel protests last year.
“The world prefers weak Jews. It prefers the sight of Jews being beaten around the world, but those days are over,” Akunis said. “We defend ourselves on our own from enemies who seek our destruction and we will continue to do so.”
“We have always preferred peace, but our enemy prefers terror attacks and war,” he said. “They don’t want to live beside us, but instead of us.”
According to the Israeli envoy, the Jewish state is stronger than ever.
“We are in historic days with unprecedented achievements in all arenas. Our achievements are thanks to the courage, bravery and sacrifice of our heroic soldiers and the resilience of the people of Israel,” he said. “We are in an ongoing war of survival that claims young and brave victims almost every day. The people of Israel salute and bow their heads in their memory.”
“Our ability to celebrate Independence Day every year is thanks to them,” he added.
Since 1860, 25,644 people have died defending the country, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry.
‘It’s personal’
Hundreds of people lined up quietly down the street and around the corner of Third Avenue to enter the commemoration, which the Israeli consulate hosted with the Israeli-American Council, with strict checkpoints.
Security measures were intensive, with New York City Police Department officers seemingly everywhere and metal barricades blocking the entire street to keep vehicles far from the synagogue. Only those with confirmation emails, which had to be displayed several times, were admitted to the Modern Orthodox synagogue’s landmarked building.
Amid the heavy police presence on Monday evening, there was no sign of anti-Israel demonstrators like those who blocked the entrance to the synagogue before an event held there last November.
Daniel Milstein, 31, a partner at a venture capital firm, came to the event with two colleagues from his Israel-based company’s New York office. He was grateful “just to be here together, all together,” he told JNS.
Milstein grew up primarily in New York, made aliyah in 2018 and returned to New York earlier this year to grow his firm’s office in the city.
His maternal grandfather, Mordechai Adika, was born in Jerusalem in 1929, and was wounded in Israel’s War of Independence. He lived with shrapnel near his ribs until he died at age 93 in 2022. Jordan took Adika prisoner after he was injured and held him for 10 months. He later served for decades as a police officer on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, Milstein told JNS.
Adika would go to Har Herzl, site of Israel’s military cemetery, annually on Yom Hazikaron. For the final years of his grandfather’s life, Milstein went with him.
“I couldn’t be there this year, but it was important to mark the day and be here,” Milstein told JNS. “We all just sang Hatikvah together,” he added, of Israel’s national anthem.
When Israel’s memorial siren sounded at 8 p.m. in Tel Aviv on Monday, Milstein played a siren and had everyone in his New York office stand for a moment of silence.
“For all of us, it’s personal,” he told JNS. “That’s true for the entire Jewish people by virtue of our being part of our nation.”
