A Day to Remember, a Year to Win By Reuven Koret April 23, 2007 In a half hour, the siren will sound and the state of Israel will stop, remembering its fallen soliders and victims of Arab terror.
The cemeteries are already full with families and friends of the fallen, this day marking publicly the pain and loss that haunts them every day, just as exactly one week ago we remembered those who perished in the Shoah.
Tomorrow we will celebrate, each in our own way, with our own friends and family.
Today we are alone, today we are all one. When the siren sounds, we stand silently, the most minute gesture of respect for young men and women who gave their lives in defense of this nation.
As I write this, the news breaks that our Prime Minister is preparing a "media blitz" to pre-empt the expected report of dismal failures in last summer's war, thus trying, typically, to spin his way out of difficulties his own incompetence, or corruption, has created. His colleagues, the clueless defense minister and the out-of-her-league foreign minister, have circled the wagons, hope that they will somehow cling to power despite their failures and lack of ability.
The politicians at the head of this nation are as undeserving of leading its memorial ceremonies as they are of making its policies. In a few days, or weeks, the reports will be released, the indictments will be filed, which will give us at last a chance to rid ourselves of these undeserving, and underserving, figureheads, inadequate and impotent to represent the nation for which our soldiers sacrificed, and our citizens fell. Perhaps then we can elect a leadership that may be at least a bit better, and a bit more capable of taking on the awesome and daunting tasks that await us this year.
For this is the year in Israel's life that it must take on the greatest challenge to its existence that it has ever faced. Even as we remember the Six Day miracle that erased the existential threats of the surrounding Arab states forty years ago, and replaced that stranglehold with a Jewish commonwealth, so too I believe we are on the brink of a renaissance and a victory.
I know that victory and that rebirth will not be without pain, suffering, loss -- perhaps even of a magnitude that we have never known. But dealing with the present source of the existential threat, this festering sores that infest our region -- the calls to erase us from the map of the Middle East, to deny our right to exist in our national homeland, backed by a race to build weapons who purpose is to kill us by the millions -- will require the courage of better leaders, the skills of courageous soldiers, and the steadfast faith of ordinary citizens, here in Israel and among our friends of all faiths and our fellow Jews abroad.
We hope that the rumors of an U.S.-led operation to decimate the genocidal ambitions of Iran are not unfounded, and that President Bush will not lose his nerve to do what needs to be done. But the world must be prepared for the eventuality that, if the Americans don't lead the way, we Israelis must. And we must do so, as Aryeh Eldad so eloquently points out, by any means necessary. That act of necessity will create a new situation, fraught with danger and distress, with suffering and sacrifice. But only that act will remove an aggressive and malignant cancer that, if unremoved, will consume our nation, region, and much of the free world.
I have always believe that Am Yisrael -- the Jewish People -- cannot escape its Biblical imperative to be "a light unto the nations." But I do not understand that imperative to refer merely to the liberal requirement that we set a good and moral example for others. Yes, we should set an example, but in these days, the example required is how to stand up to evil, and how to defeat it, utterly. This is a lesson in which Israel once excelled: in our War of Independence, in the Six Day War, in Entebbe, in the Yom Kippur War recovery and counter-attack, in the Lebanon campaigns, and in the war against terror. It is a lesson that has been lately lost.
But "light unto the nations" can also be understood in the sense of ignition, of consuming the evil in our midst, of burying the evildoers in their iniquity, before they can carry our their genocidal plans, of rising up to kill those who intend to kill us. They have made their intentions perfectly clear, even as they ridicule and deny the deaths of the Jewish people in the German-led genocide.
The siren, honoring the fallen, a week ago in the Holocaust and today in the wars and attacks against us -- has now sounded. The siren also stands for Civil Defense -- as the citizens of the North experienced daily last summer and the citizens near Jew-free Gaza hear nearly daily to this day -- but for Israel today it also stands for the Defense of Civilization. The Jewish State, for all of its faults and weaknesses, stands today on the front lines against the Islamic Jihad, against the Hamas and all of the other Hamans and Hitlers of the world who seek to destroy us and exterminate the bearers of our Bible and its message. We didn't ask for this role, we didn't choose this position, but so we were chosen.
As much as we would like to shirk this decision, avoid this role, spare our families and friends from the risks in making it, and the consequences that will follow it, so we must act -- not because we want to, but because we have no other choice. Ain breira. It would seem that we have been chosen to undertake this mission, whether we like it or not, whether we deserve it or not.
We Israelis, from left and from right, from the most religious to the most secular, will not go quietly into the night, flee into exile, allow ourselves to be flooded by enemies, pushed into the sea, wiped off the map, burned to ashes. We, like the citizen-soldiers who have preceded us, will stand at the ready, living our lives, laughing and loving with the passion that characterizes us, enjoying our beautiful land, working in one of the world's most productive nations, flourishing with the diversity of our cultures and collective creativity, honoring and re-enacting our sacred and historic traditions. Enjoying our freedom, celebrating our independence.
So if and when the moment comes to act to ensure that there is a land to live our lives and bequeath to our children, and to eliminate the enemies who ceaselessly mock our past and threaten to destroy our future. Each of Israel's greatest victories has been preceded by periods of confusion, of disarray, of discord, of indecision. From the darkness of the present moment, I believe, will come a great light, a light to the civilized nations, a shining example of how to act with courage and conviction in the justice of our case, and our indomitable will to live as free people in our own long-lost homeland.
Those who have fought and fallen to bring us to this day deserve no less. We and our children and their children deserve better: we cannot be forced to cower in the shadow of death.
This is the year that the representative of the eternal and indestructible Jewish People must seize the initiative and ensure its future. This is the year that Israel must win.
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