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Remembering Them All, Bringing Them All Back

>> Read all messages from Zehava Galon

Every Memorial Day comes with its list of the dead. Every year, the list grows, and this year especially so. Four soldiers were killed only in the last week. Four young people, who could have been anything they wanted and now won’t be. Ministers and Knesset members talk about a “tragedy,” but these people didn’t die in a car accident. They were killed because we are once again at war, Israel’s longest ever, in which 850 soldiers have lost their lives to date.

The term “Israel’s fallen soldiers” is misleading. They fell in Israel’s wars, but we know very well that not all fell for the sake of Israel’s security in a war that was inevitable. There is only one reason for today’s fighting in Gaza, and it is a political one: to preserve Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition. Instead of ending the war, pulling out of Gaza, and freeing the 59 hostages in one go, the Prime Minister continues to lie, as when he told us in his speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day that “the military pressure on Hamas will continue. We will return all the hostages and we will defeat Hamas.”

These are lies that affect human lives, the lives of tortured, starved, and forsaken civilians, the lives of soldiers who were supposedly sent to rescue them, and the lives of innocent Palestinians crushed to dust by bombardments and starvation. The yellow ribbon pin is perhaps the most blatant manifestation of the lie: ministers make sure to wear it on the lapel as they sentence the hostages to death, or as Smotrich put it, their release is not “the most important goal.”

The State of Israel was established as the country of a people who took responsibility for its own destiny, but is now captive to a leader who promised that this never-ending war would bring back the hostages. Though that hasn’t happened, he has no intention of taking responsibility. That’s why this Independence Day is so sad, because it confronts us with the awful about-face that has occurred in recent years: we are now a country that serves a leader, instead of a leader who serves a country.

This year, too, it will be a hollow and gloomy Independence Day, and unless we wake up, so will be the coming ones. If we despair now, we will no longer be celebrating independence, but servitude. If we despair, North Korea’s independence day ceremonies will pale in comparison to ours. I encounter too many people who close their eyes and bow their heads. Many have given up: on the hostages, on the country, on the possibility of living a normal life here. Some don’t understand how real the danger is. I pray that we will all understand, or else there is no hope for us. We must rise to our feet and fight for this country yet again.

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Dr. Maha Sabbah Karkabi

 

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tel Aviv University (2015), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London (2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University (2016-2017), and a postdoctoral fellowship Ph.D. at the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2018-2020).
Dr. Maha Karbahi’s areas of interest focus on the connection between social change, family behavior, and gender inequality in societies in the process of change and specifically in Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Her research draws attention to the study of family life and employment, using a combined “ethnic lens” and “gender lens” and paying attention to the perspective of Palestinian Arab women, a group characterized by intersections between multiple marginal locations, which over the years has remained hidden from the research eye. Dr. Karkabi-Sabah’s research is published in professional journals and chapters in scientific books that are considered pioneers in family research, work, and gender equality.

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Prof. Frances Raday

Professor Emeritus in the Lieberman Chair in Labor Law, in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and serves as a full professor in the College of Management’s academic track, where she also serves as chair of the graduate program and as honorary president of the Concord Center for International Law Absorption. Radai was a member of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council on discrimination against women. In addition, she is a prominent and feminist human rights activist.

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Dr. Rawia Aburabia 

Faculty member of Sapir Academic College’s School of Law, received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research deals with the interface between law, gender, minorities, and human rights. Has published in leading journals on the subject of the matrimonial laws pertaining to Muslim women in Israel. Her book Under the Law, Outside Justice: Polygamy, Gendered Citizenship, and Colonialism in Israeli Law is expected to be published as part of the Gender Series of Kibbutz Meuhad Publishing House.

Dr. Aburabia has extensive experience in international human rights and public law. She has worked as a jurist for the Association for Civil Right and has been invited as a specialist to address such international forums as the United Nations and the European Parliament on the subject of indigenous communities and minority rights. She has interned with Human Rights Watch in Washington DC, and has been a member of the executive board of Amnesty International. In 2018, she was selected by the magazine Globes as one of the 40 most promising young persons in Israel under the age of 40.

 

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Ron Kessler

With over two decades of experience in the field of digital content, Ron has participated in numerous political and social campaigns. He helped run the digital activity of senior public officials, and worked in various NGOs. Ron is a fundamentally optimistic man, who believes that Israel can be changed and so can people. Lives in Tel Aviv.