YOM HAZIKARON 2013

Last night I attended the local Yom HaZikaron commemoration at Robert Blackwood Hall in Monash Uni Clayton.

I wrote about my brother Yehuda who fell in the Yom Kippur War, October 1973, last year, and I really have nothing more to say about him. Although, there is good news; my daughter named her baby boy after him 5 months ago. Little Yehuda Raphael is the first to be named after him, may he always be a source of nachas to his parents.

So I won’t write about my brother. I want to write about the actual ceremony.

Some 20+ years ago when Yom HaZikaron started being commemorated in Melbourne, it was a small, short affair. It went from 8pm to 9pm, pretty much sharp, and it was all in Ivrit and attended mainly by Israelis. About 300 would come and the venues wandered around from Beit Weizman to school halls and town halls, eventually coming to rest at the Robert Blackwood Hall, one week after the Yom HaShoa commemoration. It got bigger and bigger, it drew more diverse participants and, along the way, it changed from a tight, rather military-style evening with a very Israeli flavour, to a rather long, bilingual affair, with pre-recorded segments from Israel being screened as well as lots of speeches from local dignitaries and heads of Zionist organizations. This is all OK up to a point. But the interesting thing is that, while Yom HaShoa, which attracts slightly larger crowds and involves children’s choirs and a lot more people coming and going on stage, as well as survivor testimony and candle lighting by elderly folk and their families, has become tighter and more streamlined, starting at 8 and ending at 9.30, the Yom HaZikaron evening seems to get longer and longer; last night went from 7.30 to 9.30, and then there was a singalong for the Israelis, at which point we left.

In fact, I understand why this evening has spread out in this way. Early on, there were 7 candles lit, each in remembrance of the wars fought: 1948, Independence war; 1956 Suez war; 1967 Six Day War; 1967-70 War of Attrition; 1973 Yom Kippur War; 1982 First Lebanon War; and a candle for the victims of terror. And lives lost in training accidents.

Well, unfortunately, you can see the problem here. There have been more wars. Second Lebanon. Gaza, Cast Lead and Pillar of Defence. First and second intifadas, although that was more about terror attacks. 

It’s not as ‘neat’ as Yom HaShoah and the 6 candles for the 6 million. It keeps growing. But you can’t just keep adding candles. So now there are still 7 candles lit but it’s all over the place. With each candle we hear the story of an individual who lost his or her life in defence of Israel, usually in combat but sometimes in training, or as a result of terror. 7 people come and light them, family or friends of the dead. And there are stories and stories and stories.

23,085 people have lost their lives since the State was established. Every family in Israel has been bereaved.

Last night, the hall was pretty full; but it should be overflowing. Yom HaZikaron is a reminder that, however you feel about it, as a Jew you have a link with Israel, the only Jewish state in the world. This little piece of land which has been fought over for millennia, is our land, and it’s all we’ve ever had and it’s all we’ll ever get. We’ve been kicked out of it and stomped on numerous times, but we’re still here, and it’s still ours. Whether you are religious or not, Zionist or not, left or right in politics, when push comes to shove, Israel with its politically blurry borders and its hostile neighbours, is all we Jews have. If we had had Israel, or any sort of foothold in Palestine during the time of the British Mandate, the horrors of the Holocaust would not have been. Jews had nowhere to go, in the main, and history showed that nobody wanted them, and they were murdered. We were murdered; one third of the 18 million Jews at the time, the flower of European civilization, were murdered. Triated, not decimated; decimation is the killing of one in 10. One in three of us perished at the hands of Nazism and world apathy. If we had had a Jewish state, even only a little piece of the ancient Jewish homeland which the British at first ‘gave’ us with the Balfour Declaration and then prevented us from entering during the Mandate, maybe we would have ‘only’ been decimated. We might ‘only’ be mourning 1.5 million martyrs instead of 1.5 million children. But millions would have been saved.

It is not good enough to say that Yom HaZikaron doesn’t interest you or is not meaningful to you or you have something better to do on the night. Israel is our birthright, as Jews. If we don’t show ourselves, our children, the world, that it is important to us, then it looks like we don’t care. And if a Jew doesn’t care about the Jewish state, then who the hell will?

In memory of the fallen, the heroes in battle, the victims of terror;  those who have survived with injuries, physical and psychological and spiritual; and the wounded families, whose lives have been changed forever. 

Lest we forget.

Am Yisrael Chai.