Palestinians Absent from Israel's Memorial Day Observances

Al Jazeera, reporting from Qatar, provides a critical lens on Israel's Memorial Day, highlighting the stark contrast between the state's commemoration of its own casualties and the systematic erasure of Palestinian suffering. The article underscores how this annual event, while ostensibly about remembrance, serves to reinforce a nationalist narrative that justifies ongoing violence and expansion.

The framing of Memorial Day as a period to remember Israelis killed since the inception of settlements in 1860, while pointedly excluding the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed over the same period, reveals a deeply ingrained bias in how Israeli state-sanctioned memory operates. The inclusion of casualties from the Gaza war, framed by Prime Minister Netanyahu as a response to the October 7th attack, further solidifies this narrative of victimhood and existential threat, a narrative that has long underpinned Israel's policies.

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From disintegrating Rafah to the high peak of Mount Hermon [Syria’s Jabal al-Sheikh], our sons and daughters are not willing to accept what the monsters did when they attacked us. They are determined to do justice with the perpetrators of the massacre and the horrors, and even in these very moments, they endanger themselves to create the conditions that will allow the return of all of our hostages and victory over our enemies.

Furthermore, the article touches upon the growing dissent within Israel, exemplified by young individuals like Allon Rivner who are refusing military service. This internal critique, though marginalized, offers a counter-narrative to the dominant nationalist discourse. The piece implicitly questions the international community's complicity in accepting Israel's self-serving historical accounts, particularly in light of its actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where international law and norms are consistently disregarded.

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Memorial Day is a particularly tough time for those demonstrating against the wars. There’s an expectation that the day should only be about the Israeli dead.