Mount Herzl
Mount HerzlYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

Ahead of before Memorial Day, which begins on Tuesday night, the Ministry of Defense publishes the number of fallen IDF soldiers and victims of terrorism from 1860 to the present day: 24,068.

From Memorial Day last year and until today, 56 people have been added to the tally, as well as another 84 handicapped people, who died as a result of their disability and were recognized during the year as IDF casualties.

This coming Tuesday at 8:00 p.m., a one-minute memorial siren will be sounded throughout the country, marking the start of Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of the Wars of Israel and Victims of Actions of Terrorism. Immediately after the siren, memorial rallies will begin across the country. The main ceremony will take place at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem in the presence of the President and the IDF Chief of Staff.

On Wednesday at 11:00 a.m., a two-minute memorial siren will be sounded, followed by official memorial services in 52 military cemeteries across the country and at memorial sites. The main ceremony will take place at the National Memorial Hall for Israel's Fallen on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem in the presence of the President, Prime Minister and Speaker of the Knesset. Immediately after the siren, at 11:02 a.m., a special flyover will pass over the military cemetery and the National Memorial Hall on Mount Herzl.

The Department of Families and Commemoration at the Ministry of Defense, which is responsible for the Memorial Day events, has completed the preparation of the 52 military cemeteries, the Memorial Monument to the Bedouin Warriors at Hamovil junction, hundreds of military burial plots and thousands of graves scattered in various localities from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat. The works included renovation, accessibility, maintenance, cleaning, landscaping as well as polishing and replacing damaged or old tombstones. In recent weeks, the department's employees have initiated calls to the bereaved families in preparation for Memorial Day, in order to provide any assistance they may need.

Along with the memorial events in Israel and as part of strengthening the connection with the bereaved families living abroad, the Commemoration and Heritage Division of the Ministry of Defense and the World Zionist Organization produced an online Memorial Day ceremony this year. The ceremony, intended for Israeli communities around the world, is divided into two parts: A ceremony filmed at the National Memorial Hall on Mount Herzl which will be available on the Ministry of Defense's YouTube page, as well as contents for a community memorial service which will be posted on the website of the Family, Commemoration and Heritage Department. The content will be distributed to thousands of Jewish communities around the world, and the memorial service will be translated into several languages: Hebrew, English, Spanish, French and Russian.

The names of all the victims will be broadcast consecutively on Channel 26 (Partner, Yes and Hot), Cellcom TV, Idan Plus and the Izkor website. The names will appear in the order in which they fell, from the eve of Memorial Day on Tuesday at 8:45 p.m., until the conclusion of Memorial Day on Wednesday evening.