Israel prepares to remember its war dead as battle rages with Hamas militants in Gaza

May 8 (UPI) – As Israel remains embroiled in the Gaza Strip following the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, the nation is preparing to remember the soldiers who died for the nation’s right to exist.

Israel’s Remembrance Day will take place in a few days, followed by celebrations of the country’s 76th Independence Day.

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“As we prepare to mark the first day of remembrance for Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terror since the shocking events of October 7, our hearts are weighed down by the immense, numbing loss our country has suffered,” the director wrote IDF Widows & Orphans Organization Dave Metzler.

Yom Hazikaron is known as Israel’s official day of remembrance. It falls in late April or early May and is immediately followed by Israel’s 76th Independence Day. This year, Israel observes Memorial Day from sunset on May 12th to sunset on May 13th.

“On the one hand, it is a loss on a national level, but on the other hand, the loss is also deeply personal for each of us,” Metzler wrote in an opinion piece for the Jerusalem Post.

Yom Hazikaron, the Israeli day of remembrance honoring the lives lost in Israel’s struggle for independence, “differs in character and mood from the American day of remembrance,” according to My Jewish Learning.

To commemorate this, for example, all shops and other public facilities close for a period of 24 hours.

Yom Hazikaron begins with a siren that goes off at 8 p.m. local time in the evening. Meanwhile, all Israeli military personnel stop what they are doing to stand and remember.

Israel’s memorial day comes as the United States has delayed the delivery of thousands of precision weapons to Israel to pressure the U.S. ally not to invade Rafah, according to reports Tuesday citing U.S. and U.S. officials Israeli officials reveal.

Last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – whose older brother Yonatan Netanyahu was killed in a raid to rescue Israeli hostages from Uganda in 1976 – made an appeal to Israeli brotherhood in his Remembrance Day address

“Today, on the day we remember the nation’s heroes, we must remember more than ever that we are brothers: Jews, Druze, Muslims, Bedouins, Christians, Circassians,” Netanyahu said in his 2023 speech the Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem.