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Honorable President of the State of Israel, Mr. Shimon Peres,
Speaker of the Knesset, Ms. Dalia Itzik,
Honorable Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Dorit Beinish,
Honorable Chief Rabbis, the Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yona Metzger and the Rishon LeZion Rabbi Shlomo Amar,
Honorable Government Ministers,
Chairman of the Opposition,
Honorable Chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Federation, Mr. Zeev Bielski,
Honorable Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi,
Honorable Police Commissioner, Commissioner Dudi Cohen,
Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Ambassador Henri Etoundi Essomba,
Honorable Mayor of Jerusalem, Mr. Uri Lupolianski,
Honorable Chairman of the Organization for Victims of Terror, Mr. Zeev Rapp,
Madam Director General of the National Insurance Institute, Ms. Esther Dominisini,
Bereaved Families,
Distinguished Guests,
On this day of remembrance when the people of Israel join together in unbounded respect and gratitude with the memory of the fighter-heroes who fell in Israel’s campaigns, we also remember with profound sadness the precious memory of those good and loyal citizens, innocents, who were slain at the hand of our enemies and by murderers from terrorist organizations.
In several hours, when evening falls, Remembrance Day will end and the State of Israel will celebrate sixty years of independence. Had our neighbors responded in 1948 to our hand extended in peace – how many victims would have been spared from both sides! How tremendous the suffering and loss, and how powerful the pain and grief which would have been prevented! How vast the resources destroyed in the name of the foolish illusion (which is, regrettably, still prevalent in certain parts of the Middle East) of bringing an end to the State of Israel, while criminally neglecting the real possibility of rehabilitating the refugee camps, ending poverty and illness, dousing flames, resolving hardships, broadening minds, building a better human and national future…
Today Israel surrounds the bereaved families with love and a sense of shared destiny. This is a day of restrained and quiet sadness, without hate, without outbursts, unblemished. For this is how we are, and that is our advantage: the legacy of Israel sanctifies life rather than death. At this time of togetherness with our citizens who are victims of terror, I cannot but envisage the horrific sights of the terrorist attacks I witnessed in Jerusalem.
I cannot help but think how deep the moral chasm is which separates our values and the values of our enemies. We do not deny the right of any people and country to live in peace. We fight only to defend ourselves and prevent aggression directed at us. We are making every possible effort to reduce and pinpoint our strikes against terrorists, and never intentionally harm innocents.
We do not go out to the streets to distribute candy and rejoice in enemy casualties; we do not have jihadists or shaheeds (martyrs); and there are no mothers among us who joyfully send their sons off to strap on an explosive belt and blow up buses full of passengers, malls full of people or families innocently dining in a restaurant…
Hence the justness of Israel’s stance, which has won broad international recognition – to prevent the granting of legitimacy to an organization responsible for the premeditated murder of innocent citizens, to making the total and proven cessation of terror a condition for dialogue, to recognizing the existence of Israel as a Jewish state and to obtaining a practical commitment to signed agreements.
There is nothing we desire more than to end the conflict with our neighbors, and there is nothing that would benefit both sides more than the end of the conflict. This is in no way a conflict without a solution, despite the difficulties and pitfalls. The principles to resolving it, I can say with authority, are not so far out of reach. Among our neighbors there are leaders who understand this, and we are conducting serious negotiations with them. However, the axis of hate, terror and provocation which is warring in our region, the head of which is known, is doing its utmost to fan the hatred and nourish the violence. Therefore, achieving peace is conditional on the joining together of all those who desire peace and stability in the region, with the strong backing of the international community, against the unholy alliance which constitutes the axis of terror.
Ongoing fighting, uncompromising demands and a determined stand against the terrorist organizations are not only a policy undertaken as a result of Israel’s aspirations to peace, but is a moral command crying out from the spilled blood of the citizens maliciously murdered and from the grief of bereavement of so many families in Israel which lost that which is most precious.
On this day of remembrance, as we praise the heroism of the fighters who fell on the battlefields; we cherish in our hearts those citizens who were the victims of terror and acts of hostility. We will remember for the murderer’s hand is directed at all of us, at every Jew and every citizen of Israel without distinguishing between men and women, and between an infant, a child or an elderly person. Only the hand of fate summoned the murdering terrorist, the bomb, the bullet or the missile to its random victim. It could have been any one of us.
Therefore we will embrace you, the bereaved families, with encouraging and strengthening arms. We will pray that G-d, “who heals the heartbroken and bandages their sadness” will salve your hurts and that you will know no more sorrow, and that the sword of terror and hostility will be felled forever.
May the memories of the murdered be blessed and bound to the life of the State of Israel.
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