Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi recently told fighter pilots who opposed the government’s plans to “go to hell.” Other high-profile ministers have said critics of the overhaul are “traitors,” including former and active service members who have taken an increasingly active role in the months-long protest movement. As Israel prepares to mark its most sacrosanct national holiday, military families have pleaded with politicians to display sensitivity — and stay away from commemorations.
“We ask that we not add to the sorrow and pain of the bereaved families, and of the working population, which contributes to the state and the army in all its essence and in all its spirit,” said a petition opposing a planned Memorial Day speech by ultra-Orthodox politician Yaakov Tessler in the southern community of Be’er Tuvia. Tessler canceled his speech, but many hard-liners in Israel’s government — the most conservative in the country’s history — have doubled down.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right settler in the occupied West Bank who was involved in planning a terrorist attack in his youth and later served a shortened military stint, said Monday on Facebook that the opposition to politicians’ presence at Memorial Day ceremonies was the work of “paid professional anarchists.” Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister who was disqualified from serving in the military because of his activism in a racist, anti-Arab organization, said he would not be deterred from a planned speech at a ceremony in the southern city of Beersheba, despite direct pleas from relatives of those buried there.
Benni Nadivi, whose father, Motke, was killed by a land mine in 1971 in southern Israel, visited his grave at the military cemetery in Kiryat Shaul, north of Tel Aviv, on Monday — to avoid seeing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at the official event. He placed a sign on his father’s grave asking for forgiveness for the family’s absence and saying that, like him, his children and grandchildren were “out fighting for democracy.”
He will attend an alternative ceremony on Tuesday in Tel Aviv, organized, for the first time, by a group of bereaved families.
“Not one member of this government has the right to step foot in a cemetery,” said Nadivi, who has attended protests with his family. “They can’t expect that after calling me a traitor that I will wave my flag for them.”
Maya Zirkel, 36, whose brother Yonatan was killed while on a mission in southern Lebanon in 1997, said the government is challenging “our very Israeli-ness, based on the concept of military service.”
“If the government messes with Israeli democracy, that would mean that my brother, all those young people, died in vain, and that cannot happen,” she said.
In Israel, a country of roughly 9 million, the majority of 18-year-olds are required to serve in the armed forces. Virtually everyone here has been touched by war. Graveside gatherings on Memorial Day have, for decades, stood outside the country’s often bitter politics, a rare opportunity for Israelis to unite over collective loss.
This year, it will be marked from nightfall Monday to sunset Tuesday, which leads into Independence Day. There will be flag parades, barbecues, fireworks and street parties.
But celebrations are likely to be more muted this year, with Israel more divided than it has ever been. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have flooded the streets each week for months to oppose the government’s legislative push to weaken Israel’s independent Supreme Court, which serves as the sole check on the Knesset, or parliament, and is one of the only venues where minorities such as the LGBTQ community and Palestinian citizens of Israel can appeal for legal protection.
The protesters, especially those who have lost family in service of the country, see the crisis as a battle for the character of Israel, and a test of its democracy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted on three separate corruption charges, and critics accuse him of using the judicial proposal as a way of avoiding potential jail time. Netanyahu and his allies say they are trying to restore balance to a court system that has been captured by the left wing.
The legislative package is on pause after mass protests last month that brought the country to a standstill, though Netanyahu has vowed to revive the bills when the Knesset returns from recess.
“The so-called reforms broke the equilibrium between the center left and the religious right,” said Gideon Rahat, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a research center based in Jerusalem. “And it is so broken that now even a day like Memorial Day is problematic.”
“Ministers know that you can’t win an argument in a cemetery when a brother of a fallen soldier screams at you,” he continued. “And at the same time, the moderate, center section of the political map, which pays taxes, serves in the army, follows the law, and has been quiet for a long time, are not ready for this day to be consensus anymore.”
Avinoam Shiran’s son Daniel was killed in the summer of 2006, as Hezbollah missiles rained down on his hometown of Haifa during the Second Lebanon War. “For those of us who have lost everything, we are demanding now that we, at least, be listened to,” he said.
Shiran and his wife couldn’t bring themselves to miss Tuesday’s ceremony. For the first time, though, they will not watch the official government broadcast from Mount Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery, where the politicians who have called their countrymen “anarchists” and “traitors” will appeal for national unity.
“Our child gave his life for the country, but the contract is not that the country could ever stop being free and democratic and become a place that my children wouldn’t want to live in,” said Shiran. “Daniel would have gone out to protest, too.”
