Prof. Brig.-Gen. (res.) Aryeh Eldad, former Chief Medical Officer of the IDF, decries the increasingly individualistic nature of Israel\'s Memorial Day. Speaking with Arutz-7 today, Prof. Eldad said,
\"What hurts is that this day is becoming more characterized by more and more private mourning, as opposed to national mourning... In the Bible, the number of fallen is only mentioned in battles in which the People of Israel were defeated. In those that we won, the number of our fallen is not mentioned. The feeling today is that we are counting our dead one by one as if we lost the wars. We are collecting the individual losses, but we are not joining them together to one national sacrifice as if to say, \'Yes, we are fighting for the existence of the Jewish Nation in the Land of Israel, and this is our necessary public sacrifice...\' We are forgetting that the reason for a national day of mourning for the soldiers is to emphasize that which they all share - the continuing war for our national existence in which they all fell. Each of the fallen has his own private day on which he is remembered, which is of course very important - but today is not that day.\"
\"What hurts is that this day is becoming more characterized by more and more private mourning, as opposed to national mourning... In the Bible, the number of fallen is only mentioned in battles in which the People of Israel were defeated. In those that we won, the number of our fallen is not mentioned. The feeling today is that we are counting our dead one by one as if we lost the wars. We are collecting the individual losses, but we are not joining them together to one national sacrifice as if to say, \'Yes, we are fighting for the existence of the Jewish Nation in the Land of Israel, and this is our necessary public sacrifice...\' We are forgetting that the reason for a national day of mourning for the soldiers is to emphasize that which they all share - the continuing war for our national existence in which they all fell. Each of the fallen has his own private day on which he is remembered, which is of course very important - but today is not that day.\"