On Israel’s Memorial Day, sirens wail for the dead and for rockets

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Memorial sirens for generations of Israeli war dead sounded across the country on Monday, while air raid sirens warned of impending shelling as the conflict sparked by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack dragged into its eighth month.

Traffic came to a standstill for the traditional two-minute silence marking Israel’s annual Remembrance Day, observed the day before Independence Day.

President Isaac Herzog opened commemorations at Jerusalem’s Western Wall on Sunday evening with his shirt collar torn as a Jewish symbol of mourning.

In his speech after him, the head of the armed forces, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, took personal responsibility for the failure to stop the cross-border rampage by Palestinian gunmen, the deadliest day in Israel’s history.

On October 7, about 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 kidnapped. Since then, another 273 Israeli soldiers have died, mostly in an attack on Gaza that Palestinian medics said killed more than 35,000 people.

Parts of Israel were evacuated in the south near the Gaza Strip and in the north on the border with Lebanon. There were airstrikes in both areas on Monday. The memorial sirens sounded with a solid tone, while the air raid sirens had rising and falling tones so residents could tell the difference.

Commentator Chen Artzi-Sror wrote in the best-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that it was not a day of remembrance this year because the “ongoing presence of grief and loss” is not yet a thing of the past.

“At a time when our brothers and sisters are being held hostage, when entire parts of our country are deserted and when the list of the fallen and wounded grows longer every day, there is no such thing as everyday life.”

While polls have shown broad Israeli support for the war, views of the government are mixed. Nearly half the population – 48% – wanted ministers to hold memorial events at military cemeteries, the Israel Democracy Institute think tank said.

Much of the public anger has focused on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a veteran conservative who has long presented himself as a guarantor of national security.

Unlike many of his ministers and defense chiefs, Netanyahu has dodged questions about his political responsibilities. He sees the war – which has sparked a second front with Lebanon and drawn attacks by Iran-backed militias in Syria, Yemen and Iraq – as a showdown with Tehran that he had long predicted.

“Our loved ones who fell in this war and in all of Israel’s wars … represent eternal values: love for humanity and the people, love for the country, sacrifice, faith in a just cause,” Netanyahu said in a speech.

“Either we – Israel – or they – the Hamas monsters. Either continued existence, freedom, security and prosperity – or destruction, massacre, rape and slavery. And we are determined to be victorious in this fight.”

(Author: Dan Williams; Editing: Peter Graff)