Mordechai Solomonov believes in the importance of speaking to Jewish youngsters from around the world who don't live in Israel, which he is doing on Memorial Day.
He is giving the talk as part of a memorial event in honor of his son David OBM, who was killed in action in 2003.
“My message to them is that they should consider being here as visitors, in the short term or long term, or moving here. Give it a chance,” he says from the Israel National News studio where he brought David’s hat with him.
Solomonov immigrated to Israel with his son David, who wasn’t so happy with the move at first.
“He wouldn’t call it immigration. He would call it deportation because we took him against his will at the time when he was 13-years old. He had a very rough couple of years but by the time he was recruited, he went through the whole nine years, I mean everything. Not only going to the service but going to Golani and later becoming a sniper in Golani.”
His message to the young boys and girls is to “give it a chance.”
For him, Memorial Day is “the only day that matters; it's a personal day.”
“I’m not exactly a group person, especially when it’s something that I know it’s on the calendar, even the personal day is not that bad," Solomonov says. "The tough part is things that come out of the blue like day-to-day, you walk in the street and you see a soldier in uniform whose silhouette reminds you of David and that’s a punch in the stomach.”
Does he find the transition from Independence Day to Memorial Day difficult?
“I don’t have a problem with that. It’s definitely better than the other way around. The connection is important because Memorial Day starting from way back is what helped us to get Independence Day. So that’s painful but a natural course of events. The people who were killed were the ones who enabled us to continue to celebrate.”