On December 19, 1947, as the War of Independence approached between Israel and its surrounding Arab neighbors, the brilliant writer, Natan Alterman published a prophetic poem in the newspaper, Davar. It is what the entire people of Israel understood. Despite the United Nations Resolution 181, granting after 2,000 years of exile, statehood to the Jewish people in their indigenous homeland, everyone in the fragile Yishuv knew but did not dare to utter the words, that national sovereignty and independence would not be granted “a silver platter.”
It would take, however, the tremendous sacrifice of “the dew of their youth, still on their head.”
24,213 men, women, and children have given up their lives for us to be able to have a tiny Jewish state. This number includes 4,255 victims of terror.
Almost every Israeli has a friend, neighbor, or relative that has given up their life in defense of the Jewish state, or who was an innocent victim of terrorism.
We all know some of their names, Lucy, Maia and Rina Dee, Malki Roth, Koby Mandell, and Ari Fuld. To their families, however, there exists a grief beyond measure that they will carry to their graves.
It bears saying today, on this solemn day, that none of us, here in the United States living in our comfortable homes, has the right to criticize the state of Israel unless they are willing to move there, pay their taxes, and serve in the Israeli Defense Forces.
We know that whether or not one considers himself right or left, liberal or conservative if G-d forbid something were to happen to the Jewish state, he or she would be in deep mourning.
At 8 o’clock tonight, the air of Israel will be punctured, once again, in memory of the enormous sacrifice that has been made so that there can, once again, be a sovereign and independent state of Israel for the Jewish people in their indigenous, ancestral homeland; a state that has never been offered up to the Jewish people “on a silver platter”.
