Where the state-organized commemorations of October 7 go wrong

Israel’s Government Approves National Day of Mourning for October 7 Attack Held on Hebrew Date (Ha’aretz, October 14, 2024).

The government decision to have two memorial days in 2024 – only in 2024 – was made back in March. As it happens, there were two parallel memorial events on the first, October 7: a live event organized by many of the families and organizations actively advocating the return of our captives; and a pre-recorded event organized by the state under the management of the minister of transport, Miri Regev. The second day, the officially mandated Memorial Day adjacent to Simchat Torah, the Jewish calendar day on which the horror took place. The two events on that day will commemorate the civilians killed in the massacre, and the soldiers killed in the battle (I assume the battle is the three days in which the IDF re-established full control over Israeli territory, and not the wars against terrorists in Gaza, Lebanon, Judea-Samaria, and against Iran). Both events will be state-organized and, this year at least, again under Miri Regev’s management.

My attitudes are those of a concerned and attentive citizen. My attention is drawn to what seems to be a deliberate and quite vicious assault against immediate relatives of the victims of the day-of-horror and of a very wide swath of general population. The state, embodied by the government, has abducted the anguish of so many in our country, and seized the constant suffering of families and friends of the murdered, of captives, and of soldiers who have just fallen. People have yet to digest what is happening to us. Yet, a group of ministers has taken it upon itself to stamp a quickly made “tradition” on events that are still unfolding and on a collective mood that hasn’t yet coalesced. Who gave them the right to do so? From where comes the sheer gall of this small group, elected to run state systems, to seize the natural need of our people to express their feelings, to create collective memories, to define their culture? A healthy society – certainly its leaders – must have the collective wisdom to honor the acutely painful sensitivities of many portions of its population.

But the assault is more heinous. For it seems that at the civilian memorial, no speaker from the directly affected families was invited to speak.[i]  We’re to see a memorial in which the core mourners and sufferers are not represented, have no voice, might even oppose the entire event!

Can anything be more offensive, more grievous? This is the very government that captained our ship of state on that fateful day. While so concerned to marshal responsibility for how we shall publicly mourn Simchat Torah 5784, these are the very ministers who failed in their executive responsibility to protect its people on that day. Moreover, they have avoided publicly acknowledging that responsibility. Nor has the prime minister done so. Ignoring ongoing pleas from the public, they continue to avoid calling for the establishment of a state commission of inquiry. But publicly mourn they shall! And of course, government leaders will speak at the memorial.

There is surely impropriety in all of this. In Yiddish, it would be called א שאנדע, literally a shame. However, the English confines the emotional force of the invective contained in the Yiddish. Scandalous or outrageous is better. But lack of shame will do for the moment. Lack of shame so characterizes our government that “shame, בושה” became a clarion call by millions in Israel, heard at almost all rallies around the country. Accused and branded by the shouts of בושה, בושה well before Simchat Torah 5784, the government had already lost the respect and trust of countless of its people, as well as its moral legitimacy and after the day-of-horror, only legal legitimacy remains. And the government continues its inattention to the sensibilities of critical core communities in Israel. I, for one, shall never trust it again.

There are communities of experience and memory that must be respected. There are behaviors by the government that are unacceptable and to abandon doing the unacceptable is often the wise, humble and honorable thing to do. There are boundaries, and many of us recognize them. The government does not.

Would that our leaders would learn this, before the whirlwind.

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[i] It may well be that attempts were made to have a member, or members, speak at the memorial. It may be that they refused.