Israelis, marking Memorial Day for their war dead Tuesday while preparing for Wednesday’s Independence Day festivities, received mixed messages from their national leaders.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, in a brief speech at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl, suggested that bereaved families might consoled by the knowledge that there are “better days” ahead.
But Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, addressing a memorial gathering at Kiryat Shaul, near Tel Aviv, said nothing has changed since Israel fought for its independence in 1948.
“We are still involved in the battle over the right to have a hold here,” he said. “This is the same war which began in 1948 and has not yet been ended.”
“Our enemies have the same goal — to get rid of us — even if rifles, tanks and airplanes have been replaced by stones, knives and petrol bombs,” the defense minister said.
President Chaim Herzog, in a televised Independence Day address, said he was “profoundly disturbed” by the “polarizing tendencies” he has witnessed, “particularly among the youth who have been ensnared by the attitudes of fanatical marginal groups completely alien to the Jewish spirit.”
Herzog also warned against vigilantism. “Let’s be wary of attempts by unauthorized bodies to take the law into their own hands and act in place of the bodies authorized to do so,” he said.
“That way lies the ruination of the delicate fabric of our democracy, and if we damage our democratic system, our very existence is endangered,” the president warned.
An ugly incident developed at the military cemetery in Sde Warburg, demonstrating the polarization Herzog warned about.
Knesset member Dedi Zucker of the dovish Citizens Rights Movement was hounded out of the cemetery because of his support for dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
“I thought that in our military cemeteries we are one big family, that one cannot distinguish between the dead of the right and the dead of the left,” a shaken Zucker said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
