 Yom Hazikron Soldiers saluting the Israeli Flag: “We Remember and Honor our fighting men and women and ..WE SALUTE YOU!”
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 Israel Defense Forces tweet-19April2018 Harold Simon, AKA Smoky Simon, fought in the War of Independence. Here’s his story: |
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 Israel Defense Forces tweet-18April2018 “He said three words to me- these are the three words that allow me to go on. He said to me- Mom, I can.”- Miriam Peretz talking about one of her two sons, both of whom are fallen IDF soldiers |
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The Story of the Six Day War |
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 יום הזכרון Yom HazikaronFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Yom HaZikaron (Hebrew: יוֹם הַזִּכָּרוֹן, lit. ‘Memorial Day’), in full Yom HaZikaron LeHalalei Ma’arakhot Yisrael ul’Nifge’ei Pe’ulot HaEivah (Hebrew: יוֹם הזִּכָּרוֹן לְחַלְלֵי מַעֲרָכוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל וּלְנִפְגְעֵי פְּעֻלּוֹת הָאֵיבָה, ‘Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of the Wars of Israel and Victims of Actions of Terrorism’), is Israel‘s official remembrance day,4th of Iyar (ד׳ באייר ). While Yom HaZikaron has been traditionally dedicated to fallen soldiers, commemoration has also been extended to civilian victims of terrorism. To avoid the possibility of Sabbath desecration should either Yom HaZikaron or Independence Day take place on Saturday night, both are observed one or two days earlier (the 3rd and 4th, or the 2nd and 3rd, of Iyar) when the 5th of Iyar falls on a Friday or Saturday (Shabbat). Likewise, when Yom HaZikaron falls on Saturday night/Sunday day, both observances are rescheduled to one day later. This means that Yom HaZikaron is only actually observed on the 4th of Iyar if that date is a Tuesday. The day opens with a siren the preceding evening at 20:00 (8:00 pm), given that in the Hebrew calendar system, a day begins at sunset. The siren is heard all over the country and lasts for one minute, during which Israelis stop everything, including driving on highways, and stand in silence, commemorating the fallen and showing respect. A two-minute siren is sounded at 11:00 the following morning, which marks the opening of the official memorial ceremonies and private remembrance gatherings at each cemetery where soldiers are buried The Miracle of Ad HalomBy: Rabbi Lazer Brody Israel’s Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron, begins this year on Sunday evening, April 14, 2013. Israel never forgets its debt of eternal gratitude to its sons and daughters who gave their lives for the achievement of the country’s independence and its continued existence. It is a day of collective and personal heartache mingled with awe and honor for our holy martyrs. When looking at Israeli military history, most people consider the Six-Day War of 1967 as Hashem’s greatest miracle of modern times. My choice would be the War of Independence of 1948-49.  The Miracle of Ad Halom “The Pillbox” – the Hagana gun emplacement that guarded the Ad Halom bridge outside of Ashdod The “Ad Halom” Memorial commemorates the courageous soldiers that sacrificed their lives to stop the advancement of the Egyptian Army northward in the Israel Independence War of 1948 In the initial stage of the War of Independence, the Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian armies scored notable successes. It looked like the tiny Jewish nation would be finished before it began its modern-day rebirth. The formidable Egyptian army – backed by tanks, artillery, armor and aircraft, which Israel did not have – were able to cut off the entire Negev and to occupy parts of the land that had been allocated to the Jewish state, reaching as far north as Ashdod. The Jordanian Legion succeeded in defending their key position in Latrun after a bloody aborted attempt by an untrained and inexperienced Israeli assault force that included quite a few Holocaust survivors that had recently arrived in Israel from the deportation camps of Europe. They also overran and captured Gush Etzion. The Iraqis had almost reached the Mediterranean and the Syrians were dangerously near Haifa. Jerusalem, with 100,000 Jews was virtually cut off from the rest of Israel. Hacked to pieces in this way, Israel was not very far from collapse in June of 1948. “The Pillbox” – the Hagana gun emplacement that guarded the Ad Halom bridge outside of Ashdod The Israeli Army then was not much more than new immigrants from Europe and Morocco with a few kibbutznik commanders. Many of the soldiers had no firearms. Some had never shot a rifle and had little idea of what to do in a battle. If a “rare” machine gun broke down or needed assembly, it was necessary to wait for a rare expert to come along who knew how to assemble and repair machine guns. Most of the Israel’s soldiers had had little or no training. Thousands of them were new immigrants rushed off the boats and given guns, most unable to speak Hebrew and understand commands. The Egyptian Army dealt a nasty blow to the Givati brigade in the Battle of Nitzanim, a mile south of Ashdod. It looked like nothing could stop the Egyptians from reaching Tel Aviv; then, the war would be over and so would the State of Israel, Heaven forbid. The morale of the Egyptians was high and the Egyptian press and people were already celebrating. First, they seized Gaza, then Majdal (Ashkelon), then Beersheba and now Nitzanim with Ashdod next on the list. By Egyptian calculations, Israel’s ill-equipped armies and settlements would fall swiftly. Egypt also hoped to reach the Ramle area to link up with the Arab Legion’s forces at Latrun. Such a move would be a mortal blow to the Jewish forces. Yet Hashem had other plans. An Egyptian column of some 500 vehicles was making its way up the Coastal Road towards Tel Aviv. The column was confronted by a bold company of Givati soldiers who had miraculously exploded the sturdy Turkish bridge over the Lachish river at the Southern entrance of Ashdod to delay the Egyptian advance. Barely 20 miles separated the enemy from its objective. With no time to waste before the Egyptians could circumvent the bombed out “Ad Halom” (“up to here” in Hebrew, the northernmost point of the Egyptian thrust into Israel) bridge, Israel tried its first aerial attack. Lou Lenart, an experienced American volunteer, was selected to lead the historic mission. He was joined by Moddy Alon, Ezer Weizman, and Eddie Cohen. Each plane swooped down on the enemy with two 70-kg bombs. They tried to strafe the Egyptian column despite heavy ground fire. Unfortunately, the Messerschmitts’ untested 20 mm cannons and machine guns jammed quickly and the few rounds that they fired didn’t inflict much damage. But the psychological effect was enormous. The surprised Egyptians thought they were being hit by a massive air bombardment. They panicked and scattered all over the adjacent sand dunes. By the time they regrouped, they had lost the offensive. Israel’s outnumbered Givati forces seized the opportunity to launch a counterattack. With Hashem’s loving grace, they stopped the advance in its tracks. The Turkish Bridge (Rebuilt) over the Lachish River at the Ad Halom crossroads – if the Egyptian Army’s progress would not have been thwarted here, then nothing would have stopped them from reaching Tel Aviv The price of success was high: Eddie Cohen, a South African-born pilot, was killed when his Messerschmitt – apparently hit by anti-aircraft fire – crashed and burned trying to land after the mission. As a result, the First Jewish Fighter Squadron lost one-fourth of its aircraft and one-fifth of its pilots on its maiden combat sortie. Eddie Cohen of blessed memory was not the macho type of pilot. Indeed, he was contemplative, calm, scholarly, never daring, and never reckless or adventurous. This anti-hero was the Israeli Air Forces’s first heroic martyr. He merited being Hashem’s emissary in the formidable miracle that turned the tide of Israel’s War of Independence. With an army that wasn’t an army, an air force that wasn’t an air force, and a pilot that preferred classical music and archeology to flying warplanes that weren’t much more than souped-up Piper Cubs, Hashem chose to perform the miracle of Ad-Halom on the outskirts of my beloved hometown of Ashdod. “They have their chariots and they have their horses, but we shall call the Name of Hashem our G-d!” (Psalm 20:8). |
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Yom Hazikaron: Israel’s Memorial DayThis day honoring fallen soldiers, immediately precedes Israel’s Independence Day. By MJL Staff http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Modern_Holidays/Yom_Hazikaron.shtml The fourth of Iyar, the day preceding Israel’s Independence Day, was declared by the Israeli Knesset (parliament) to be a Memorial Day for those who lost their lives in the struggle that led to the establishment of the State of Israel and for all military personnel who were killed while in active duty in Israel’s armed forces. Joining these two days together conveys a simple message: Israelis owe the independence and the very existence of the Jewish state to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for it.
Yom Hazikaron, the Israeli Memorial Day, is different in its character and mood from the American Memorial Day. For 24 hours (from sunset to sunset) all places of public entertainment (theaters, cinemas, nightclubs, pubs, etc.) are closed. The most noticeable feature of the day is the sound of a siren that is heard throughout the country twice, during which the entire nation observes a two-minutes “standstill” of all traffic and daily activities. The first siren marks the beginning of Memorial Day at 8 p.m., and the second is at 11 a.m., before the public recitation of prayers in the military cemeteries. All radio and television stations broadcast programs portraying the lives and heroic deeds of fallen soldiers. Most of the broadcasting time is devoted to Israeli songs that convey the mood of the day. “Magash Hakesef” (The Silver Platter), a poem written by Nathan Alterman during the 1948 War of Independence, was during the 1950s and ’60s the most common reading for Yom Hazikaron ceremonies. The poem attained a status almost similar to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in U.S. culture. |
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The Silver Platter Natan Alterman And the land grows still, the red eye of the sky slowly dimming over smoking frontiers As the nation arises, Torn at heart but breathing, To receive its miracle, the only miracle As the ceremony draws near, it will rise, standing erect in the moonlight in terror and joy When across from it will step out a youth and a lass and slowly march toward the nation Dressed in battle gear, dirty, Shoes heavy with grime, they ascend the path quietly To change garb, to wipe their brow Full of endless fatigue and unrested, Thus they stand at attention, giving no sign of life or death Then a nation in tears and amazement And they will answer quietly, “We Are the silver platter on which the Jewish state was given.” Thus they will say and fall back in shadows |
 The Silver Salver-1947 |
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During the ’70s, especially following the Six-Day War (June 1967) and the Yom Kippur War (October 1973), numerous new poems and songs commemorating fallen soldiers became popular and often replaced “The Silver Platter” in public ceremonies. “Hare’ut” (“Friendship”), a song composed a year after the 1948 war, had an impressive comeback in the 1980s and ’90s. The late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin considered this poem/song to be his favorite. להקת הנח”ל – שיר הרעותAlmost every high school in Israel has a “memorial corner” with the photos of the school graduates who fell in battle or while on military duty. Some high schools organize their own Yom Hazikaron ceremonies and invite the families of the fallen graduates to participate. The unique atmosphere of the day is enhanced by the sight of teenagers and children, all dressed in white shirts and blue pants or skirts, on their way to school, and thousands of soldiers in uniform on their way to the military cemeteries. The list of fallen soldiers becomes longer every year. The inevitable tendency of radio and television programs is to focus on individual stories of soldiers who lost their lives in recent decades, rather than on those who fought in the pre-state undergrounds and 1948 war, who have fewer surviving immediate family relatives today. Yom Hazikaron is not conceived as a religious commemoration by the majority of Israelis, but as part of the civil culture. The siren sound seems to inspire awe and sanctity no less than any traditional religious ceremony. Outside of Israel, Yom Hazikaron is commemorated as part of Israel Independence Day observance. There is usually a short memorial or a moment of silence preceding the communal Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration. In synagogues that observe Yom Ha’atzmaut, a special reading may be added to the service, often preceding the Kaddish [memorial prayer]. |
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Inoffensive SavageryBy Pamela Geller 14November2012 https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/11/inoffensive_savagery.html
When is the word “savage” not racist and offensive? In Tunisian citizen Souhir Stephenson’s “Tunisia, a Sad Year Later,” published last Wednesday in the New York Times, she wrote: “Tourism is dwindling. Who wants to vacation among bands of bearded savages raiding embassies, staking their black pirate flag over universities or burning trucks carrying beer?” “Bearded savages.” This appeared in the Times just six weeks after the paper ran a piece calling my American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) subway ads “potentially inflammatory” and quoting Muneer Awad of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) calling me “a bigot and a racist” for the ad, which reads: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.” Indeed, this ad touched off a nationwide firestorm, with pundits and activists all over the country excoriating me for using the word “savage” to describe Islamic jihadists and supremacists. CNN “journalist” Mona Eltahawy was actually caught in the act of spray-painting over the ad, and was arrested, after which little act of fascism she had the gall to claim that she was merely exercising her freedom of speech. What is the difference between the New York Times’s use of the word savage and the AFDI use? Or Hillary Clinton’s, for that matter? In a statement on September 12, she used the same word to characterize those who had attacked our consulate in Benghazi and murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American officials: “This was an attack by a small and savage group — not the people or Government of Libya.” Is Clinton’s use of the word savage offensive? In all of these instances, we are all describing the same barbarians: Islamic jihadists who glory in violence and murder. So why is my ad unacceptable, but no one is angry with Souhir Stephenson or the Secretary of State? My use of the word “savage” has been widely decried as “racist” and “dehumanizing.” Critics have invoked the use of the term to describe Native Americans and others in attempts to prove that any use of it is clear evidence of racist and even genocidal inclinations. But is any and every use of the word “savage” really some kind of thinly veiled call for genocide? Nonsense. Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the Nazis “savages.” And they were. Would Muneer Awad call him “a bigot and a racist” as well? Nor do the critics of the AFDI ad have anything at all to say about the very real savagery that is committed in the name of the jihad against Israel. And that in itself raises questions about their real agenda. The AFDI ad refers not to all Muslims, as has often been claimed, but to those jihadis who rejoice in the murders of innocent civilians. The war on Israel is a war on innocent civilians. The targeting of civilians is savage. The murder of Ambassador Stevens was savage. The relentless 60-year campaign of terror against the Jewish people is savage. The torture of hostage Gilad Shalit was savage. The bloody hacking to death of the Fogel family was savage. The Munich Olympic massacre was savage. The unspeakable torture of Ehud Goldwasser was savage. The tens of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel (into schools, homes, etc.) are savage. The vicious Jew-hatred behind this genocide is savage. The endless demonization of the Jewish people in the Palestinian and Arab media is savage. The refusal to recognize the state of Israel as a Jewish state is savage. The list is endless. This kind of savagery goes on in the name of jihad on a daily basis around the world — and my ads are the problem? Souhir Stephenson’s piece in the Times demonstrates the hypocrisy of the ad’s critics, and their moral myopia in identifying the resistance to savagery as worse than the savagery itself. It is time for all genuine supporters of human rights to stand against the savagery that Hillary Clinton identified in Libya and that Souhir Stephenson rightly excoriates in Tunisia, and that is regularly celebrated as heroism in Gaza. But do the guardians of acceptable opinion have the courage to be consistent? Note: I submitted this piece as an op-ed to the New York Times last week, after the Times attacked me for using the word “savage” of jihadists and then using it themselves. Predictably, they never responded. So that just adds to this tale of media bias and irresponsibility. Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and the author of the WND Books title Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.
 The historic AFDI pro-freedom campaign that changed the discourse and finally had press, politicians and pundits calling savages savages (not militants, insurgents, resistance blah blah blah). We took a lot of heat, but the truth won out. |
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 On Jan. 29, 2004, 11 people lost their lives and 50 were wounded in a suicide bombing on Egged Bus 19 in Jerusalem. Since that tragic incident, the remains of Bus 19 have travelled around the world as a reminder of the horrors of terrorism. First stopping at The Hague for the International Court of Justice hearing regarding the Israeli West Bank barrier, the wreckage was then brought to the United States, where it toured among various cities, college campuses, synagogues, and churches. |
 Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing was the suicide bombing of a crowded public bus (Egged bus 2) in the Shmuel HaNavi quarter in Jerusalem, Israel, on August 19, 2003. Twenty-four people were killed and over 130 wounded. Many of the victims were children, some of them infants. The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. |
Miracles in Gaza IDF The Israeli Defense Forces |
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Mother Rachel testimony from IDF soldiers |
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Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption ad – Boyfriend – with English subtitles  These flags are flags of the Nazi Youth Organization “Hitler-Jugend”, regional branch of Palestine. The historical context to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini.” Every Israeli will understand this message. Will the Americans understand what we have to go through both as Civilians and in the Military? Just because someone is not in uniform does not mean they are not a target for an Arab Nazi (Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah ect.) terrorist. The Arabs have always been Nazis and they are still Nazis.  Iktiba High school posts picture presenting Hitler as admirable This will not stop until Israel either transfers then or goes for Total Victory like the Allies did during World War II. For Example: Soviet reprisalsFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia< In the Soviet occupation zone, thousands of youths were arrested as “Werwolves”.[53][54] Evidently, arrests were arbitrary and in part based on denunciations.[53] The arrested boys were either “shot at dawn” or interned in NKVD special camps.[53] with an total “Isolation policy“.
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Eli Groner, Israel’s PMO Director General – Israel`s 69 Independence Day in LA |
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שערי שמים . Gates of Heaven |
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Israel is Fighting the World’s WarDaniel Greenfield April 25, 2023 http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2023/04/israel-is-fighting-worlds-war.html The dead included a 6-year-old boy and his 8-year-old brother killed in a car ramming attack in Jerusalem, a British mother and daughters gunned down on the road, a 27-year-old from Connecticut traveling to a wedding, and an Italian tourist run over on the beach.
In some countries, the soldiers fight wars, in Israel, they fight to stop a genocide.
Ever since the “throw the Jews into the sea” era, the agenda has never changed.
After the shooting of two brothers driving through the occupied village of Huwara, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted a poll asking the Arab Muslim settlers if they approved of the terrorist attack. 71% of them supported the killings.
When Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, arrives on Monday evening, it finds a nation at war against a genocidal enemy that has half the world under siege.
In the past several weeks, five terrorists were arrested in Sweden, four in France in yet another plot to carry out an attack the Champs-Elysées, a teenager in the UK will be tried for plotting an attack at the Isle of Wight Festival and an Islamic terrorist leader in Australia was sentenced to 15 years in prison for planning to behead a non-Muslim and drape his body in the ISIS flag.
Stories like these have become so routine and overshadowed that we no longer pay any attention to them. Islamic terrorism unites us all. Its victims include America and Europe, India, China and Russia. It crosses the world from Africa to Asia and ends up on our doorstep.
With so much of the world under siege, it is a wonder that a tiny country so narrow you could walk its width has been the finger in the dike, holding out against a tide of death flooding the world.
The Jihad did not begin in Israel, but it was a warning to the world of what was to come. The prediction that we would one day all be Israelis, that Islamic terrorism would become a part of our everyday lives and we would go on while trying to ignore it, has long since come to pass.
Surrender is not an option, but it has never been an option in a country where it would mean the mass murder, with occasional side mass rape, of the population. Israel has retreated, it has negotiated, but it has never surrendered. The terrorist attacks serve as a constant reminder of an enemy that obsessively kills women and children because its mission is total extermination.
Only 38% of the Israelis killed in Islamic terrorist attacks in 2023 were military age men. 27% were female and 22% were children. The murdered included 6-year-old and 8-year-old boys run down in the street, a 14-year-old boy on the way to synagogue and a 15-year-old British girl traveling with her family.
This is why the Israeli soldier serves. He is there to put his body on the line between Islamic terrorists and the most vulnerable and innocent children whose lives they lust to take.
Islamic terrorists don’t kill children by accident, they see it as their highest calling.
House Democrats recently protested the arrest of Sheikh Rashid Ghannouchi, of Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda Movement, who had called for “unceasing war against the Americans”.
“There are no civilians in Israel. The population—males, females and children—are the army reserve soldiers, and thus can be killed,” Ghannouchi had also declared.
The Islamic cleric has often been described as a “moderate” by the media. Moderate Muslim clerics believe in exterminating all the women and children. What do the “extremists” believe?
Despite Israel’s turbulent politics, Yom HaZikaron, the commemoration of the fallen, briefly clarifies the stakes.
And the stakes are the children. And the world.
The Muslim world convinced the international community to pressure Israel by promising that the Jihad would stop there. “Give us Israel and it will end,” they urged. Despite all those promises, the Islamic war against civilization has spread across the world. Most of the world’s major nations and some of the minor ones have their own Islamic insurgency that plays by the same rules: alternating political demands with brutal massacres in the name of Islamic rule.
Generations of Israelis have gone to an endless war, sacrificed sons and daughters, to hold back the tide. They did it in defiance of the ignorance, hostility and pressures of the world.
They did it because they believed, they did it because they refused to die and they did it because surrendering to an enemy that gleefully butchers children was unthinkable.
Despite everything that has happened in the last generation, the world has learned little. But the Israelis have learned that peace is an illusion and that all they can do is hold the line.
When the torches are lit and loved ones weep, when the ‘blood of the maccabees’ blooms, a nation reckons again with the price that it pays for survival. Whatever myths pacifists may harbor and anti-war activists preach, there is no escape for any nation from paying that price.
Some nations have it paid by others, as the United States of America has done for so much of the globe, but in a world where evil is a reality writ in the black ink of the Koran, there can only be temporary refuges from the reckoning.
Israel still relies on a draft army. The price paid for war is a shared burden, but so is the price paid for appeasement. The fallen and their families come from all walks of life. These men and women, grandmothers, sisters, sons and nephews, have paid the world’s price in tears. They did not do it for the world, but their nation’s memorial day is nonetheless a lesson for the world.
Paying the price for freedom has long since become a cliche. Israelis do not pay the price for freedom. They pay it so that their children, their loved ones and their people are not eradicated from the earth by a brutal enemy that has no concept of mercy and worships barbarism.
The Israelis have come up against a choice that we will all have to make sooner or later. They chose not to die. The day will come when we may face that choice as starkly as they do.
Let us hope and pray that we choose well. |
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