Today is Yom HaZikaron, the Memorial Day for the dead in Israel’s wars.
No family is unaffected. My father’s uncle, Alfred Freimann, was among those murdered in the shayarah, the convey of academics on its way to the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus, when it was ambushed on 13 April 1948 and everyone was killed. (https://honorisraelsfallen.com/fallen/freiman-dr-avraham-chaim-alfred/) He was a leading jurist, involved in preparations for Israel’s independence. I cannot imagine the impact this had on my father, who was in the Haganah in the siege of Jerusalem, in that grim, courageous year. ‘I lost many friends in the Old City,’ he would say. His Yahrzeit falls on Yom ha’Atzmaut.
I’m thinking today of many friends: Raba Tamar, whose brother lost his life in Tsahal; Aaron Barnea, who lost his son in Lebanon; Rami Elchanan and Bassam Aramin, fellow leaders of the Parents Circle, who each lost a daughter to terror; Sharone Lifschitz, whose father was murdered in Gaza; Steve Brisley, whose sister Lianne was murdered with her daughters on October 7; the Hathaleen family whose brother Awad was killed by violent settlers.
That is why I have lit a candle here at home and have made a list of friends to call during the day. It is also why, last night, I joined the members of our synagogue watching together the 21st Israeli Palestinian Joint Memorial Ceremony, ‘We Are the Day After.’ (https://www.familiesforum.co.uk/21-st-joint-memorial-day-ceremony)
What can I say, but the silence of an aching heart?
Women and men, Israeli and Palestinian, spoke of how violent death took away their loved ones, children, brothers, cousins; of how the horror of loss and the destruction of their homes shook their families. Unable to travel, most of the Palestinian participants testified by video.
Each person, every circumstance, was unique. But key feelings were not:
‘I was brought up to respect all life;’
‘I asked myself, “What do I do with my grief?”
‘I joined the Parents Circle, because here I can speak of my loved one, and people understand.’
‘We have the same grief in our hearts;’
‘Here is where I feel hope: in the end, we will find a way to live together in peace.’
As the organisers bravely wrote:
This year we gather in a burning reality – war, death, rockets, oppression and injustice on all sides. Despite everything and in fact because of everything we choose to look forward. The joint ceremony does not seek to compare losses or measure pain but to recognize that every life taken was a whole life with dreams, with family and with a future cut short. Together we chart a path that acknowledges pain but refuses to surrender to it. A path of humanity, solidarity and hope.
What can one add, but the silence of an aching – yet somewhere hopeful? – heart?