לכבוד כל החללים במלחמות ישראל מלידה עד היום, זיכרונם לברכה

I'd been wondering for a long time, what it was, exactly that seemed to distinguish my understanding of Israel from that of my (generally American) peers. I'd always figured that it was that I'd spent my first conscious years there - or that I lived the years after my family had moved to the United States in the same style and state of mind, for the most part.
This is largely true, but a vague sentiment yet; and one lending little understanding to the question.

After all, what does it mean to be in the state of mind of an Israeli? For a long time, it seemed to me that it was a nation-wide understanding, respect of, and celebration of Jewish tradition. Israel is, by definition, a religious Jewish state. However, it couldn't be just that. New York has one of the largest and most active Jewish communities, much of which is largely unassimilated, and more 'in touch' religiously with its (historical) identity, per say, than much of Israel is. There are many, many Jewish people all around the world, and in the Americas especially, who identify with and support Israel - as the state of their religion and its national revival, as the home of their beloved relatives, as a place of beauty and technological progress, whatever - but they do not see it as I do. They do not see it as all of the above, and something greater just the same.

Today, reading a NYT article describing a new exhibit in Yad Vashem, displaying the many cultural and otherwise contributions of Holocaust survivors to the (birth and development) of the state of Israel - rather than the terrors extolled upon them, their families, friends, and contemporaries - it hit me.

Yom haZikaron (יום הזיכרון), memorial day to the Israelis who have died in the protection and preservation of the Jewish state, is only a few days after Yom haShoa (יום השואה), memorial day to the victims of the Holocaust. This is by no coincidence. The two are largely interconnected - but not in the sense that anti-Zionists frame it. The founders of Israel didn't use the Holocaust as an excuse to create Israel; the Holocaust forced the Jews who did not believe, did not have the courage, did not want to leave the cultural development or the safety of knowing what is awaiting - to see that there is no other choice. If not they wouldn't have built Israel then, then when? When the next Holocaust came? No.

Half of those who fought, many if not the majority of whom died, in the War of Independence (1948-49) were Holocaust survivors. Yes, it could be said - and I assume it was said then - that these people had nothing to lose. They had lost their families, they had experienced the ultimate traumas, they had seen annihilation by the thousands. Many of them did not know what to believe in. Yet they fought to the last; men, women, and children stayed and fought - and prepared poison to create a second Masada, rather than die at the hands of enemies as so many had at the hands of Hitler. They fought for their survival, yes, and they fought for Israel. Why?

It is true that perhaps some had difficulty going to America; during the war the US had rejected Jews, and though it accepted thousands after the war, out of guilt (perhaps), perhaps it wasn't that easy. It may be that there were problems getting to South America (to which, many fled as well), or returning to Europe. Maybe; that is what many other survivors did, after all. But maybe it was something else.

After learning of the atrocities of World War II, Jews in the US, in particular, had a sudden strike of guilt. They had remained in relative safety, while so many had been devasted. So, they sent money in loads; all the money they had, even if they didn't have much for themselves. They sent money to Israel, to Europe, wherever it could be used. It was largely with this money, that the weapons with which Israel finally won the Independence War. Still, the effect was not the same; it couldn't have been.

The people that fought in 1948 saw Israel as redemption. It was religious and cultural redemption - a return to Jerusalem [even if it was officailly UN territory at the time...], a return to the very place where buried under layers of rock are artifacts of Jewish culture centuries back. It was a national redemption. spread around the world for millenia, Jews remained very much a nation; so much a nation, in fact, that Hitler had just attempted to terminate them as one. Now, their nationhood would be recognized, and they could unite with the people that had been thousands of miles away for years, and yet could be traced as family members of long ago...

Fine, this is all well known; it can be found on any Zionistic brochure, and it was well known to the many American Jews who passionately tended to Israel in its early years. There must have been something else, still.

My grandfather was 16 when he joined the Soviet Army. After his parents, his aunts, his uncles had become victims of the Holocaust through various terrible stories I could not possibly recount correctly, he dropped out of school and went to fight. After the war, he did not move to Israel. Yet his stories flow in my blood - though with a different understanding. Years after the Soviet army freed thousands upon thousands of Jews in concentration camps, my parents grew up in a country where to be a Jew meant to be limited, and to be a successful Jew meant to be so far above everyone else so as to inspire investment despite the handicap. It wasn't so bad, we could say, just as much as we can blame this or that unpleasant situation on whatever circumstances surrounded it, rather than...

The people who fought for Israel in 1948, and then in 1953, in 1967, in 1973, in 1982, 2006, and all the battles in between did so because Israel was built off sand and tears (as the songs go), built with a nationalism advertising ongoing construction, built as proof that the Jewish nation is far from dead, but more alive than ever in every aspect there is; built as the ultimate Jewish redemption, not just to the Holocaust, but to the years and years of what Hebrew-speaking individuals call חו''ל (HUL) - חוץ לארץ, outside of the country. And the people who stood there and fought to the last in 1948 did so because Israel was their personal redemption for the submissiveness that they had just exhibited in WWII.

In the 1920's in particular, anti-semitism was not foreign to America. A New Yorker article from some years back addresses the Ivy League policy to reject Jews on varying excuses, in order to restrain their growing participation in the elite educational system.

Today the United States is Israel's biggest supporter (followed by Germany, perhaps ironically). Inside, Jewish communities are thriving. It is unlikely that this will change in the forseeable future.

Yet, despite the ongoing threats, the attacks, the semi-functional government, I feel safer about Israel. Today, on יום הזיכרון, I praise and commemorate all those who, despite dangers and terrors have felt the same way.