With the sounding of a siren at 8pm on Monday, Israel begins the commemoration of Memorial Day, remembering soldiers killed since the establishment of the first Jewish settlements in Palestine in 1860, through Israel\u2019s many wars with its neighbours and attacks on Palestinians, up to those who died enacting its genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n
The day is observed every year on the 4th of Iyar on the Hebrew calendar \u2013 corresponding this year to the evening of April 20 and the day of April 21. Traffic stops, silences are observed, wreaths are laid, places of entertainment are closed, and, on television, normal programming is suspended \u2013 replaced by the names of Israelis killed in the 166 years since settlement is regarded as having begun \u2013 88 years before the Nakba, and the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians on Israel\u2019s official founding as a state.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n This year, the list will include the names of 25,644 soldiers as well as 5,313 civilians. Not featured anywhere will be details of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed over the same period.<\/p>\n In last year\u2019s commemoration, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to pains to cast the events of the day against the background of the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, which killed 1,139 Israelis, without reference to the more than 72,000 Palestinians Israel went on to kill in Gaza during its two-year war on the besieged enclave.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom disintegrating Rafah to the high peak of Mount Hermon [Syria\u2019s Jabal al-Sheikh], our sons and daughters are not willing to accept what the monsters did when they attacked us,\u201d Netanyahu said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are determined to do justice with the perpetrators of the massacre and the horrors, and even in these very moments, they endanger themselves to create the conditions that will allow the return of all of our hostages and victory over our enemies,\u201d Netanyahu added, maintaining a narrative of sacrifice in the face of existential threat that has characterised much of his political life.<\/p>\n In recent years, according to critics, those narratives of sacrifice and threats have consolidated into a nationalism with little patience for questions or dissent, one that has underpinned Israel\u2019s violent expansion into the occupied West Bank and cast aside any concerns over international law or norms in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cMemorial Day is a particularly tough time for those demonstrating against the wars,\u201d 18-year-old Allon Rivner, one of a growing number of young Israelis refusing to serve in the military, told Al Jazeera from northern Israel. \u201cThere\u2019s an expectation that the day should only be about the Israeli dead, so people don\u2019t like it when you try to talk about Palestinians.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m currently volunteering and have been asked to talk to some younger people today about what Memorial Day means,\u201d Rivner explained, saying that he had already been criticised over his plans to include Palestinian deaths among the Israeli ones in his presentation. \u201cThat\u2019s just one example. There are more. I think people just don\u2019t like the idea that these soldiers might have died for nothing. Look, my grandmother\u2019s brother was killed in the 1973 war, and I have no problem saying he died in vain. All of these deaths are in vain.\u201d<\/p>\n Annual attempts to mark Memorial Day in a manner that acknowledges the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed have suffered in the face of official resistance and right-wing threats. In the past, governments have attempted to ban Palestinians from attending the joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremonies, while activists from across Israel\u2019s growing network of right-wing groups have threatened such ceremonies and those who attend.<\/p>\nRecommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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