A Country Stands Still: Israel Marks Memorial Day with a Minute Silence

Israel on Tuesday evening marked the beginning of Memorial Day with a siren and a minute of silence in honor of the country’s fallen soldiers and terror victims.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called for unity at a Memorial Day ceremony in Jerusalem, saying “if, God forbid, our solidarity is broken, or we allow anger and hatred to grip us, then at that moment our enemies will take advantage of it to harm us.”

Since the last Memorial Day, 56 soldiers in active duty have died and a further 84 disabled veterans have died as a result of complications from wounds they sustained during their military service.

Thirty-three people also died from terror attacks over the last year and four disabled victims surrendered to injuries inflicted in attacks, the Times of Israel reported.

In his speech, Bennett reminisced about the time he spent serving as a commando in southern Lebanon during the 1990s.

“We were there in Lebanon, all of us together. Kibbutzniks and city kids, secular and religious, from Beersheba and Haifa, right-wing and left-wing, Jews with non-Jews,” he said.

“There, in the bases of southern Lebanon, I fell in love with our wonderful nation,” the prime minister went on. “Many friends remain there… They were 19 or 20 years old and didn’t return. The connection between us all was natural, something that did not even need to be discussed…Each risked his life for the other. We were brothers.”

Bennett also warned that Israel could fall again as it had done twice in history: “Our State of Israel is the third time that there is a sovereign Jewish state here in the Land of Israel. The previous two times, we did not succeed in reaching the eighth decade in peace.”

“This is the most important lesson in our history, and I do not tire of repeating it,” stressed Bennett. “In the first instance, our first state, in the days of David and Solomon, [the state] survived 80 years as a united and sovereign kingdom. In the 81st year, because of internal conflicts, the country split in two, and we lost forever most of our people, the ten tribes.”

“In the second instance, during the Second Temple period, the Hasmonean kingdom existed for about 77 years as a united and sovereign state. Towards the end of the period, there was again a severe internal conflict within us and it was the Jews themselves who invited the Romans inside Israel. We lost our independence and became a humiliated protectorate of the Romans,” stated Bennett.

“And we also lost this protectorate, at the end of the Second Temple. In the heat of purism and hostility, Jews burned each other’s food reserves, inflicting defeat on themselves. What a terrible price we paid: 2,000 years in exile, because we succumbed to hatred between brothers.”

The prime minister warned that while “we have won a third chance….there may not be another chance.”

“We are now in the eighth decade of the state, the decade we have not yet succeeded in as a united nation. We have been given an opportunity to correct the sin of our ancestral brotherly hatred and to get rid of the inclination of sectarianism that destroyed our people,” said Bennett.