Released hostage Emily Damari among Yom Haatzma’ut torch lighters, singer Yardena Arazi refuses honor

This year’s torch lighters at the official ceremony at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl for Yom Haatzma’ut include released hostage Emily Damari; October 7 heroine Rachel from Ofakim who held off Hamas terrorists for hours; and judoka Oren Smadga, winner of a bronze medal in the 1992 Olympics, whose son Omer Smadga was killed in battle in Gaza in June 2024.

Singer Yardena Arazi says she was asked to light a torch but turned down the offer, saying that “the torchlight ceremony is a state ceremony, but this is not a state-like period.”

Singer Zehava Ben, known for popularizing Middle Eastern music, along with musician Micha Shitrit, who founded the band Natasha’s Friends with Arkady Duchin and put together the Hebrew word project Avoda Ivrit, and American conservative commentator Ben Shapiro are also among the lighters this year.

Two IDF officers were selected, including Lt. Col. Fayez Fares from the Druze town of Hurfeish, who arrived with his troops independently at Kibbutz Re’im on the morning of October 7, where they fought against dozens of terrorists and rescued civilians.

Also selected is Alon Elharar, a senior logistics officer in the Northern Command and a mother of three from Ramot Naftali. She was evacuated from her home in the north amid Hezbollah’s attacks at the start of the war and has been serving in the reserves since October 7. Her son, Sgt. Amitay Alon, 19, was killed in a Hezbollah drone attack on the Golani Brigade’s training base on October 13, 2024.

Elharar continues to serve in the reserves.

Deni Avdija, an Israeli basketball player who was ninth in the 2020 NBA draft and is now playing in Oregon for the Portland Trail Blazers, will also light a torch, as well as Ben Carasso, a 10-year-old Israeli who, with his mother, began a public relations tour for Israel after October 7, speaking around the world in English about his experience as a child living through war.

Others chosen to be torch lighters include 90-year-old Blanca Got, who has been knitting olive green clothing items for IDF soldiers since October 7, and Shai Graucher, whose project “Together We Will Win” supports those deeply affected by the war and the October 7 Hamas attack. Graucher organizes vacations for bereaved families, circumcision and naming events for new babies, and birthday parties for children orphaned by the war.

Another torch lighter is Chici Algnanin, 84, a new immigrant from the US who was born in Tehran and who turned her Herzliya apartment into cooking central for soldiers, a project now joined by dozens of volunteers.

Also set to light a torch is historian, researcher and lecturer Levana Zamir, who was born in Cairo in 1938, and researches Jewish life in Arab and Islamic lands, deepening the connections between the communities.