With sirens sounding at 8 p.m. on Monday, Israel began Memorial Day commemorations, remembering soldiers killed since the establishment of the first Jewish settlements in Palestine in 1860, Israel’s numerous wars with its neighbors and attacks on Palestinians, up to those killed in the massacre in Gaza.
The day is celebrated every year on 4 Iyar according to the Hebrew calendar – which corresponds to the evening of April 20 and the day of April 21 this year. Traffic is stopped, silence is observed, wreaths are laid, places of entertainment are closed, and, on television, normal programming is suspended – replaced by the names of Israelis killed in the 166 years since settlement is believed to have begun – 88 years before the Nakba, and the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians upon the official establishment of Israel as a state.
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4 item listend of list
This year, the list will include the names of 25,644 soldiers as well as 5,313 civilians. Details of the thousands of Palestinians killed during the same period will not be displayed anywhere.
At last year’s commemoration, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked hard to present the day’s events against the backdrop of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that killed 1,139 Israelis, without reference to the more than 72,000 Palestinians Israel has murdered in Gaza during its two-year war on the besieged enclave.
“From dismantling Rafah to the high peak of Mount Hermon (Syria’s Jabal al-Sheikh), our sons and daughters are not ready to accept what the demons did by attacking us,” Netanyahu said.
“They are determined to bring to justice the perpetrators of genocide and horrors, and even in these moments, they put themselves in danger to create conditions that will allow the return of all our hostages and victory over our enemies,” Netanyahu said, maintaining the narrative of sacrifice in the face of existential threat that has characterized much of his political career.
In recent years, according to critics, those narratives of sacrifice and threats have consolidated into a nationalism with little patience for questions or dissent that has underpinned Israel’s violent expansion into the occupied West Bank and sidelined any concern over international law or norms in Gaza.
fought the past
“Memorial Day is a particularly difficult time for those demonstrating against wars,” Alan Rivner, 18, told Al Jazeera from northern Israel, one of a growing number of young Israelis refusing to serve in the army. “There is an expectation that this day should only be about the Israeli dead, so people don’t like it when you try to talk about the Palestinians.
“I’m currently volunteering and I’ve been asked to talk to some young people today about what Memorial Day means,” Rivner explained, adding that he had already been criticized over his plan to include Palestinian deaths among Israeli ones in his presentation. “This is just one example. There are more. I think people don’t like the idea that these soldiers might have died for nothing. Look, my grandmother’s brother was killed in the 1973 war, and I have no problem saying he died in vain. All these deaths are in vain.”
The annual effort to mark Memorial Day in a way that acknowledges the thousands of Palestinians killed has faced official resistance and right-wing threats. In the past, governments have attempted to ban Palestinians from participating in joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremonies, while activists from Israel’s growing network of right-wing groups have threatened such ceremonies and their participants.
This year the event has been shortened Held online.
Hassan Jabarin, founder of the Palestinian legal rights organization Adalah, said, “For Palestinians, this day is a tragedy. That’s why we have a very different view of it.” “For Israelis, it’s a day to remember their soldiers, but for Palestinians, Memorial Day and the day after, Independence Day, just bring back memories of the Nakba.”
radical future
Complaints are growing that Memorial Day is becoming more politicized as Israel’s remote and settler communities take an increasingly vocal role in the government. During a speech ahead of Memorial Day in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned that fighting would only stop if “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians were successfully displaced from Gaza and Syria was partitioned.
These were not the goals of any specific government, but rather constitute “the consensus of the people who want life” and “the final picture of a campaign that was imposed on us”, Smotrich said of the series of conflicts initiated by Israel since 2023, which have directly and indirectly killed hundreds of thousands of people and now – along with the consequences of the war with Iran – threaten the global economy.
“As the current coalition comes to power in 2022, it is becoming more right-wing and more political,” said Nimrod Fleshenberg, spokesman for Mesarvot, an association supporting Israelis who, like Rivner, refuse military service. “It’s always been scary, but it’s definitely becoming more so.”
Fleischenberg noted that officials have chosen to honor Rabbi Avraham Zerviv as a torch bearer at this year’s Independence Day ceremony, as a person who has contributed to Israel. Zerbiv lives in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank and happily films himself driving a bulldozer to destroy Palestinian homes.
“(He) tells you everything you need to know,” Flaschenberg said.
