Israel's Remembrance Day events opened Tuesday evening in Jerusalem, with the annual ceremony for fallen IDF soldiers in Jerusalem's Yad L'Banim center.
Speaking at the ceremony, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu cited his own personal loss: his brother Yoni was famously killed during the daring raid to free Jewish hostages in Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976.
"As the son of a bereaved family, I like you carry the burden of grief, falling into the abyss of sadness," he told the audience of bereaved family members. "When I received the news about my brother, and after that when I relayed it to my parents, my entire world collapsed on me. The same thing happened to you."
Paying tribute to the 23,447 soldiers who have died defending the State of Israel, Netanyahu said each and every citizen of Israel shared in their sense of loss and stood in honor of them on Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day).
Their lost loved ones "were first and foremost of our own flesh, but they are also of the (entire) nation, who share their respects and recognize the scale of their sacrifice," the PM said.
"There is no one (here) who has not lost a son, brother, father, husband, friend, daughter; there is no one who has not cried 'why?'
"I can testify that I asked the same question when my brother fell, but with the passage of time I realized that it is necessary to ask why."
Netanyahu also called for national unity, bearing in mind the shared sacrifice of Israelis from all walks of life to preserve their country.
"We won't give up on the hopes of reconciliation with our enemies, but first we must reconcile among ourselves, and there is no deeper expression of our shared fate than when we remember, with love, and salute our heroic sons and daughters who fell so that we could live in our country," he said.