On Israel's Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism Remembrance Day we will unite, as we do every year, in the memory of our heroes who sacrificed their lives for the independence and security of Israel. On this day we put all of our differences aside; there will be no right and no left – only a sense of unity and shared destiny.
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On Memorial Day, my personal grief meshes together with the national grief felt by all Israelis. As fate happened, my own father, Yosef Danon, became one of those 23,928 fallen, dying around Memorial Day. Every year, when I accompany my mother to the military cemetery in Kiryat Shaul to mark the anniversary of his death, we feel the entire country bowing its head in commemoration of our personal hero. Indeed, this is the power of every Memorial Day in Israel, where for one day, personal pain and grief are felt by the whole nation.
My father, one of the best reconnaissance navigators the IDF has known, was mortally wounded during one of his stints of reserve duty in the Jordan Valley when he sustained a severe head injury in a battle with terrorists who had infiltrated Israel. He struggled with his injuries for many painful years, until they eventually led to his death on the eve of Memorial Day, a day he revered and honored his comrades who never returned from the field of battle.
For the bereaved families, remembrance is a lifeline. Every picture, film, or story brings back to life our fallen loved ones. Because the majority of the fallen died young, the reservoir of memories is relatively limited. I carry the memory of my father with me every day, but I've carried his memory for far longer than the years I was able to be with him. Most bereaved families are in a similar situation, having had short periods of time with their loved ones to build memories and decades of coping with bereavement and clinging to those memories.
Despite the acute pain, life goes on; we create new experiences, get married and start families, all without our missing loved ones. With each significant event and milestone of our lives, we feel the significance of their loss anew and imagine how different it would be if our fathers, husbands, brothers, or sisters were there with us. In these special moments, we create memories in our heads that never occurred. What would my father have told me on my wedding day, what kind of relationship would he have had with my eldest son, who is named after him, and with the rest of his grandchildren who he never got to meet? Every meaningful event is a virtual encounter that produces virtual memories.
Throughout the many years that my father has been gone from my life, I've created dozens of memories that never happened in reality, for moments of joy and sadness, crisis and success, when swearing my oath as a member of Knesset and before giving important speeches at the United Nations. The imagined memories become intertwined with the brief memories of the past to create a unique mosaic of our fallen loved ones. On Israel's Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism Remembrance Day, when all Israelis unite for one venerated day of mourning, we will cherish every memory of our loved ones, both real and imagined.
