Thousands of ways to remember: 6 things to know for May 8

1. Remembering those lost: Israel is marking Memorial Day, a somber day when families of soldiers killed in battle or who died during their service, as well as slain terror victims, are remembered and honored.

• According to official tallies, 23,741 Israeli soldiers or pre-state fighters (going back to 1860) have been killed, and the country has suffered another 3,150 terror fatalities going back to 1948 and up to Sunday, when the last four were added to the toll.
• Some 1.5 million Israelis (that’s about one in six) visit military cemeteries Wednesday, Walla news reports, citing the Defense Ministry.
• Even for those that don’t leave home, TV and radio broadcasts focus almost exclusively on these remembrances, ignoring almost all other news, many of the stories breathtakingly personal.
• “Omri, you did not manage to leave me a path to follow behind you, but you are the light that illuminates my way. I love you always,” reads a letter from Rotem Tal to his big brother Omri, killed in the 2014 war with Gaza published by Army Radio.
• Between ceremonies throughout the day, Channel 12 shows melancholy cartoons telling the stories of those lost.
• Online, the channel highlights a social media post by actress and singer Amit Farkash, whose brother Tom was killed in the Second Lebanon War: “I’ll walk down the aisle this year just like I dreamed and you won’t be there. You won’t be able to dance with me, drink with me, be happy with me, and… you are so missed. The emptiness will always be so large even as the years pass by.”

2. Seeing the other side: In the Knesset and at Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, memorial services were marked by songs from pop stars and others punctuated by stories and poems from the likes of Yehuda Amichai, Haim Gouri and the fallen themselves.

• In another part of Tel Aviv, thousands attended a controversial memorial service for Israelis and Palestinians.
• “Sitting in long, orderly rows of plastic chairs in a grass field in Yarkon Park, attendees listened to Israelis and Palestinians commemorate loved ones killed on both sides of the conflict and heard activists speak about their hopes for peace in the region,” ToI’s Adam Rasgon reports from the scene.
• In the Gaza Strip, some 20 Palestinians watched a live feed of the ceremony, said Rami Aman, founder of the Gaza Youth Committee, a group working to build connections with Israelis and expose them to the dire situation in the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.
• “We think the idea of a joint ceremony is excellent and we would like to come next year,” Aman tells The Times of Israel in a phone call. “We believe it is very important to listen to the Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones in the conflict because they have paid the price. We believe a solution to it can come from them.”
• In Haaretz, Alit Karp writes about the importance of the ceremony in exposing Israelis to Palestinian suffering: “The long years of hostility have erased the face of the other side, and it’s easier to hate someone you don’t know – certainly someone whose pain you don’t acknowledge,” she writes.

3. Grieving ‘Nazis’: But the event mostly drew media attention for the protests outside, with Israelis opposed to the joint commemoration waving flags and calling out epithets at attendees.

• The Ynet news site counts some 200 protesters, reporting that they yelled lovely things like “Kapo, go back to Gaza,” and called those walking past “Nazis” or “Hitler.”
• In a video published on the right-wing Israel National News website, activist and maybe future MK Itamar Ben Gvir says it is “insanity,” and “an embarrassment.” No, he’s not referring to calling bereaved parents “Nazis,” but rather the existence of the ceremony.
• “The bereaved families and victims of terrorism who initiated the ceremony as an alternative to commemorating fallen IDF soldiers and terror victims have pained the majority of the grieving families and the wounded,” Meir Indor writes in Israel Hayom. “Their conduct, in an attempt to speak well of the victims, is reminiscent of Stockholm syndrome in which the abducted begin to identify with their kidnappers. The Jewish people self-flagellating is an old story. Jews have always tried to find among ourselves the reasons why Jews are hated.
• Amir Ben-David in ToI sister site Zman Yisrael writes of the various tensions on display, including “between the delicate, hesitant hope, the speeches and songs on stage at Yarkon Park, and the singing of ‘Hatikvah’ through the megaphones of the dozens of angry demonstrators who remained on the other side of the fence.”

4. Transition to joy: Tensions are also on display with Independence Day beginning Wednesday night and print newspapers, which will not be published Thursday, needing to cover both the somber Memorial Day and the happy, barbecue filled Independence Day.

• On Yedioth Ahronoth’s front page, Hanoch Daum notes that the four people killed in Gaza violence on Sunday represented four of the main demographic groups in Israel: secular, religious, ultra-Orthodox and Arab.
• “While we have our internal squabbles which always seem urgent and important, our enemies don’t care,” he writes, urging all groups to see the best in each other and good amid the bad.
• “Our remembrances of today are not just tied the dead of ‘yesterday,’ but even more so to our independence and tomorrow,” writes Nadav Shragai in Israel Hayom, tying the two themes together.

5. Ultra-Orthodox memorials: Tuesday night also saw hundreds of people attend a ceremony in Jerusalem for Haredi soldiers killed in combat.

• The event was billed as a first ever, though some noted that ceremonies honoring Haredi soldiers have been held in the past. This ceremony was the first exclusively for soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda Battalion of ultra-Orthodox soldiers, which lost two soldiers in a high-profile shooting attack late last year.
• The ceremony represents part of an ongoing change in the way the ultra-Orthodox public regards Memorial Day. In the past, many in that community did not take an active role in national memorial events and individuals were often filmed refusing to stand still during the sirens that wail throughout Israel on twice during the day.
• A video on Twitter shows hundreds standing in silence at a ceremony in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak.

יום הזכרון לחללי מערכות ישראל. בני ברק עיר התורה והחסידות זוכרת את הנופלים הי״ד על קדושת השם. pic.twitter.com/XUhzK6liPu

— ישראל כהן (@Israelcohen911) May 7, 2019

• The Behadrei Haredim ultra-Orthodox website reports that almost all Haredi politicians attended official memorial ceremonies throughout the country.

6. Iranian threat: Haaretz is the only major paper to not lead its print edition with Memorial Day, instead reporting on tensions with Iran and Tehran’s decision to partially pull out of nuclear deal.

• This comes as the US is sending warships to the region over an unspecified threat that may have much to do with Israel, the paper’s Amos Harel writes.
• “The potential for Gaza to be used for diversionary operations against Israel, as a secondary front in a larger conflict, remains unchanged. Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the new leader of Islamic Jihad, was recently photographed with [Iranian general Qassem] Soleimani in Beirut. Iran does not dictate tactical operations to Islamic Jihad. It does send money and set overall strategy. This, too, is part of the overall picture, which looks to become bleaker as the summer progresses.”
• Multiple sources tell The Daily Beast, though, that while the intel given the US may have been fine, its reaction to it was somewhat overblown.
• According to the report, the Iranian threat related to proxies, though proxies that would be attacking US forces in Iraq or Yemen, not Israelis in Ashkelon.
• “The risk is a low-level proxy unit miscalculating and escalating things. We’re sending a message with this reaction to the intelligence, even though the threat might not be as imminent as portrayed,” a US official says.