I will remember you, at IKEA: 6 things to know for April 27

1. Remembering, from home: Israel is preparing to mark its annual Memorial Day in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, with military cemeteries closed to the bereaved families of fallen soldiers for the first time in the state’s 72-year history.

• The decision is lamented by some of the relatives of the slain soldiers and praised by pundits as the responsible thing to do.
• “The decision to prevent people from going to the cemeteries on Memorial Day is correct,” writes columnist Nachum Barnea in Yedioth. “It could have been formulated differently, with a different tone, as a strong request and not as an order, but it’s difficult to argue with the decision itself.”
• Defense Minister Naftali Bennett last week said the order barring the family visits would not be physically enforced by police.
• Families have until 4 p.m. on Monday to visit, before the sites are shuttered.

2. Remember, don’t forget: In an annual tradition, Monday’s papers are full of wrenching memorials of the fresh-faced fallen soldiers and terror victims, from family members and friends.

• Yedioth Ahronoth leads the paper with the story of Maj. Nadav Milo, a paratrooper who was killed in a battle in southern Lebanon in 1997 at the age of 24. Twenty-three years on, his 21-year-old nephew, also named Nadav Milo, is an officer in a paratroop unit.
• “It was all very fresh after Nadav was killed, but is seemed like the right thing to do at that period in time,” says his mother Einav of the decision to name her son after her slain brother-in-law. “As he grew up, he heard the stories and was connected to him, but we also explained to him that the burden of being named after his uncle won’t fall on him.”
• Israel Hayom features letters from the families of four slain soldiers and terror victims in its opening spread, including the five-year-old son of a soldier killed in the 2014 Gaza war, who was born months after his father was killed.
• “In my dream, you beat all the bad guys and then all the soldiers hugged you,” says Harel Bar Or, the son of the late Tsafrir Bar Or, 32. “Then you buy us ice cream and come home. I wish you would play soccer with me and to hug you. I dressed up as a soldier and we looked alike. I wish you would come back.”
• Forty-two soldiers and civilians were killed since last Memorial Day and the number of Israeli casualties of war stands at 23,816, according to figures released by the Defense Ministry on Friday.
• The first memorial siren will sound Monday night at 8 p.m., followed by the traditional ceremony at the Western Wall, which will have no audience as part of the virus restrictions. The second siren will sound Tuesday at 11 a.m.

3. Kaddish, at IKEA: In the absence of the usual Memorial Day traditions, some bereaved families are planning to mark the day outside IKEA in a comment on the government’s decision to allow the Swedish furniture store to open last week while announcing the military cemeteries were set to be shut Tuesday.

• Dr. Galia Ketzef tells Channel 12 on Sunday of the plan for a makeshift memorial outside the Rishon Lezion branch of IKEA on Tuesday morning, coinciding with the memorial siren at 11 a.m.
• She says the government decision to close the cemeteries is correct and wise. But she says there is no need to station police there, describing it as an insult.
• “We’ll go [to IKEA], we’ll stand during the siren. I asked a friend to say Kaddish. We’ll light a candle, maybe bring a photo and a name. And I call upon all bereaved families — come join us.”
• “Let’s come together, in accordance with all the rules and regulations, keeping two meters’ distance,” with masks and hand sanitizer, she says.
• “The bereaved families don’t need Memorial Day, if anything we need a day of forgetting. We remember every day. It shapes our personalities and those of our children,” she says, adding that “the significance of Memorial Day is to remind the people of Israel where we came from, where we’re going and what society we would like to be.”
• Ketzef’s brother Aharon was injured in 1982 near Beirut during his IDF service. He was in a coma for 2.5 years and continued to be hospitalized until succumbing to his injuries in 2000.
• According to IKEA’s website, the stores will close Monday evening at 6 p.m. and reopen on Thursday morning.

4. Closure, but no closure: Though the rates of virus infection have plummeted and most stores were permitted to reopen, the country will go under lockdown beginning Monday night to prevent Memorial Day and Independence Day gatherings.

• From Monday night, people will be barred from visiting military cemeteries and memorial sites. Intercity travel will be prohibited with the exception of people going to work and shopping in permitted stores.
• On Independence Day, which begins Tuesday evening and ends Wednesday evening, a general curfew will be in effect requiring people to remain within 100 meters of their homes — except for medicinal needs — and banning intercity travel, similar to the curfew earlier this month for Passover. Supermarkets will not be open to the public.
• The Independence Day curfew will begin at 5 p.m. on April 28 and end at 8 p.m. the next day.
• There will be no Air Force flyover on Wednesday and Israelis who wish to barbecue may do so only on their balconies and in their yards.
• The Health Ministry on Monday morning reported just 23 new coronavirus cases overnight and 68 infections over the previous 24 hours, continuing a significant downward trend in the spread of the outbreak in Israel.
• The last time fewer than 100 new cases were confirmed in a day was on March 20, when the outbreak was still in its initial stages.
• Haaretz reports that some hospitals, at their discretion rather than under direct Health Ministry orders, have begun dismantling their coronavirus wards.

5. Is that you, Shin Bet? It’s me, Margaret: Meanwhile, as the numbers dwindle, the High Court of Justice rules the controversial Shin Bet surveillance program of virus carriers can’t be extended beyond Thursday unless the Israeli government enshrines the practice in law.

• Haaretz, in its editorial, spotlights its report that the National Security Council could use the information gleaned from personal data to create an “awareness campaign” to quell dissent against the government’s coronavirus policies.
• “It turns out that soldiers and officers from one of Military Intelligence’s classified intelligence gathering units gathered data and analyzed it for the task force that the National Security Council appointed for this purpose. One of the task force’s recommendations was an ‘awareness campaign’ to prevent the development of social unrest. This is further proof that when you start using tactics that the state normally reserves for fighting its enemies, you start thinking of the citizenry as a danger to the state.
• “One proposal to forestall such a popular revolt was for the government to set up a task force that would be responsible for assessing ‘the public’s situation’ and work to raise people’s consciousness of ‘being in the same boat,’ ‘equal treatment,’ ‘a shared fate’ and ‘mutual responsibility.’ This is a farce. Instead of worrying about raising people’s consciousness, the government should allocate budgets and other resources that could prevent social unrest,” it says.
• “The people’s message to the government must be unequivocal: The state belongs to its citizens. Get out of our cellphones and our consciousness. State agencies and the security services must stop monitoring Israeli citizens and thinking of them as potential enemies. Instead, they should start working for the public to justify their salaries, which the public pays.”

6. Clash brews at Justice Ministry: Haaretz leads its coverage Monday with a serious fight brewing among Israel’s top legal officials.

• Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has reportedly been telling confidants that he has a growing suspicion that acting State Prosecutor Dan Eldad and Justice Minister Amir Ohana are bent on ousting him from his post, possibly with the help of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Mandelblit had asked colleagues in the State Prosecutor’s Office to keep him in the loop after Eldad was appointed in February, a senior Justice Ministry official who heard Mandelblit express the concerns told Haaretz in a report published Monday.
• The attorney general’s suspicions intensified earlier this month when Eldad asked his office to reexamine an opinion it gave in support of keeping the so-called Harpaz Affair closed. Mandelblit was a suspect in the 2010 case but eventually was cleared of wrongdoing by the High Court of Justice.
• Mandelblit told associates that he suspects Eldad leaked a recording to a Channel 13 reporter who subsequently petitioned the Central District Court to release all tapes from the Harpaz Affair.