Benny Gantz
Benny GantzSraya Diamant

I devoted nearly 40 years of my life to serving the Israel Defense Forces. I saw with my own eyes our sons and daughters giving their best years to the state.

I saw the best of them leave us forever. I saw the heavy price our country pays, the price we all pay, to keep the Promised Land.

It seems that from the moment we gathered here together, after years of destruction, exile and endless suffering, we are destined to live side by side with sorrow, even when the 2000-year-old hope was finally realized.

Our loved ones, whose memory we commemorate today, leave behind the largest, most comprehensive, most diverse family Israel has, the bereaved family. The one that pays no attention to the differences between us. It unites us in sorrow.

23,741 IDF and security forces casualties and 3,150 victims of hostilities left us here to cry, in their memory, but most of all, to make sure that we deserve their sacrifice. To make sure that our country keeps its way even after they’re gone.

On this day we will look at them and then look back into ourselves. We will pledge that the life we ​​live, the state we build, the culture we are rooting for, the values ​​we sanctify - respect those who were here and no longer are, so that we will continue to be here, after them.

We shall now gather for our own grief and shared bereavement. When we finish, we will remember the correction we have to make, the people we have to be, in the land in which they are not.

We will unite with the memory of the fallen, hope for the return of the missing and wish a speedy recovery to all the wounded.

May the memory of the fallen of Israel be blessed.