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Israelis favor a tense Memorial Day and the 75th anniversary of their country’s founding as a political crisis tears it apart.
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By Isabel Kershner
Reporting from Jerusalem
Every Memorial Day, thousands of families who have lost brothers, sisters and brothers in Israel’s endless wars and terror attacks gather before the dead, a commemoration that was to continue this year with a jubilant birthday party marking the 75th anniversary of the country’s founding.
But Israel is deeply divided as never before, and what has been a time of contemplation and a national birthday holiday is overshadowed by the protests and political chaos that have torn the country apart in recent months.
The minister overseeing the televised state rite for the country’s 75th Independence Day celebration, which will be held from sunset on Tuesday to sunset on Wednesday, asked the director of the event to transfer from a live broadcast to a pre-recorded practice session to dress in case of disruption through protesters. Yair Lapid, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, announced he would attend.
And grieving families are imploring politicians to abandon the same old Remembrance Day speeches in military cemeteries across the country, fearing outbursts of anger at a time when Israelis intend to unite to honor the dead.
Some families in the southern city of Beersheba are exasperated by the fact that Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister who refused military service as too extreme, is the government representative in charge of speaking at their cemetery. .
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to speak on Mount Herzl, the site of Israel’s main army cemetery, after a siren sounds at 11 a. m. Netanyahu himself comes from a grieving family: His brother was killed in an Israeli commando raid to rescue hostages from Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976 and is buried in Mt.
“I’m talking about one aspect or another,” said Sigalit Bezaleli, who worked as an administrator for decades at Mount Herzl. “Anyone who needs to come and honor us is welcome. Cemeteries are open to all. But, he added, “I need our politicians to make a gesture and speak up. “
Few other people are as concerned about the uproar around Memorial Day as Ms. Bezaleli. In addition to his paintings at Mount Herzl — where the grand Memorial Day commemoration Tuesday morning will be followed that night through the state rite that kicks off the Independence Day festivities with a parade of flags, musical performances and fire paintings — he also lost a daughter in uniform.
In 2012, his daughter Hila Bezaleli, 20, a medical officer, died when a light aircraft crashed into the level while she was rehearsing for the Independence Eve ceremony. She is buried a few meters from her mother’s office.
Bezaleli said he would stand, as he does on each and every Memorial Day, near his daughter’s grave. But he said he did not wish to hear politicians repeat clichés about the desire to be unified, or that Netanyahu would be booed. “I don’t want to hear it,” he said. Every year I listen, but this year we are torn. The flaw is as present as ever before.
This impatience with politicians has spread across Israel in recent months after a government effort to reform the judicial formula has dug deep fissures in society.
Critics say the plan will weaken the nation’s Supreme Court, eliminate protections for minorities and undermine the state’s democratic character. The judicial plan is a mandatory plan that will empower the electorate and its elected representatives and restrict the rule of an unelected judiciary.
Many grieving families, who have special prestige in the war-torn country, if their sacrifices were valuable in what they see as a crumbling democracy.
Bereaved families across the country are engaging in agonizing discussions on WhatsApp messaging teams about private protest plans, adding boos to politicians attending ceremonies or singing the national anthem while speaking, presenting pro-democracy symptoms on the graves of loved ones, or boycotting official ceremonies altogether.
Raw sentiments manifested themselves last Monday when a shouting broke out among participants in a Holocaust remembrance rally at a Tel Aviv synagogue after some of them pulled out a Netanyahu loyalist and lawmaker, Boaz Bismuth, chanting “Shame on you!”and causing him not to speak.
Other grieving family members, in addition to those in the government, are calling on protesters to put aside their grievances on Memorial Day, arguing that politicians are not the enemy and that excluding them would only deepen the division.
“Many grieving families take comfort in bringing public figures with them,” said Avichay Buaron, a far-right lawmaker from Likud’s Likud party and a supporter of the government’s judicial plans.
Buaron, whose wife lost a brother in a terror attack, was talking on the phone as he returned from the funeral of Lucy Dee, a British-Israeli woman who was shot dead in her car this month by suspected Palestinian attackers in the occupied territories. Bank of the West. Two of his daughters, Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, were also killed in the attack, which shook the country.
Now, Buaron, he feared some warring parties would exploit his grief and that of others before Memorial Day. “Take politics away,” he said. Mourning is the most holy place. “
Netanyahu on Thursday in a video called on grieving Israeli families to stay together on Remembrance Day, then signed an ordinary joint document with opposition leaders calling on the public to leave all disputes out of cemeteries. Representatives of the bereaved families who met with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and asked him to at least stay away from politicians, such as Mr. Ben-Gvir, who did not perform his military service in the cemeteries, said he refused their requests. Gallant’s ministry declined to comment.
Most of Israel’s Arab citizens, who make up one-fifth of the population, sometimes do not celebrate Independence Day. They call Israel’s status quo Nakba, or catastrophe, when thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes. war surrounding Israel’s status quo as a state. This anniversary is regularly celebrated on May 15, the day after Israel’s declaration of independence according to the Gregorian calendar.
(Israel calculates the dates of its founding and Memorial Day in the Hebrew calendar, which would possibly mean a difference in weeks from the Gregorian calendar. )
This year’s independence birthday party will also be marked by a lack of foreign dignitaries. For Israel’s 60th anniversary in 2008, then-President Shimon Peres organized a convention and invited heads of state, adding that President George W. Bush had plans for the 70th anniversary, however, those were abandoned in a previous phase of political wrangling.
Despite internal court disputes, which in many cases represent the country’s most basic schism since 1948, there are Israelis on both sides who say there is also much to celebrate on Independence Day.
Some of the warring parties to the judicial reform are proud that their protests have brought thousands of Israelis to the streets for 16 consecutive weeks, prompting the government to suspend its law to allow time for negotiations with opposition parties. Protest organizers are making plans for mass demonstration and street party in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night.
“This year deserves to be the ultimate demonstration of our independence and democracy,” said Nurit Guy, who lost his son, Shachar Guy, and an American volunteer soldier, Zvi Wolf, whom he had followed informally, a day after the 1982 Lebanon war. “It shows that we have strength,” he said.
Government supporters also say there is room for hope and that ultimately fighting “within the family,” not between enemies. People on both sides repeated the word “We have no other country,” echoing the lyrics of a resounding Israeli song.
“We paint in combination, we serve in combination in the army, on the same buses and we eat in the same restaurants,” said Hagai Goldstein, an Orthodox software engineer from Gedera, in central Israel, who was visiting a museum on Mount Herzl that is engaged to the father of fashionable Zionism, Theodor Herzl, on a recent weekday with his wife and 3 young children.
Despite being branded by some of their critics as anarchists and left-wing traitors, anti-government protesters have followed patriotic endorsements and symbols, claiming the Israeli flag, long linked to right-wing activists, and making a song the national anthem.
“There’s something beautiful about everyone wrapping themselves in the flag,” said Sherri Mandell, the mother of Koby Mandell, a boy who died at age 13, along with a friend, in a Palestinian terror attack in 2001.
“Everyone needs the country. They just have other concepts about how to do it,” he said, adding: “No one burns the flag or walks on the flag. There is a respect for the country they have built.
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