Israeli Independence Day Has a Defiant Feel

This nation’s people marked the opening Wednesday night of their Independence Day celebrations in a mood more defiant than joyful.

Just a year ago, many believed that peace with the Palestinians was within reach. But seven months of bloody fighting in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a recent string of bombing attacks in cities along Israel’s heavily populated coastal plain have left people feeling angry, frustrated, fearful and pessimistic.

Security officials added to the overall sense of gloom, issuing a warning that another terrorist attack was imminent even as they urged people to turn out for celebrations. Troops, police, volunteers and private security guards flooded cities and towns in the central plain. Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip were prohibited from entering Israel from Tuesday until Friday morning.

“As a society and a country, we have been living with these warnings and high alerts for decades,” said Aharon Franko, commander of police in the central coastal region. “The fact is, we continue living. We go to shopping malls, we go to the beach, we take the bus. We cannot retreat into our sealed rooms.”

In Kfar Sava, four bombings in and near the city in less than a month have killed three people and wounded dozens. A doctor killed in the latest attack in the suburb of Tel Aviv was buried Monday, and a 14-year-old injured Sunday remains in intensive care.

Young people in downtown Kfar Sava said that despite their fears of another attack, they planned to turn out for an open-air concert and fireworks display put on by the municipality Wednesday night.

“There is a feeling of revenge, a feeling that we’re showing them,” said Adi Moshkovitz, 15. “Yes, we feel that we are showing them, that they can’t beat us,” agreed her friend, 15-year-old Maytal Yarkoni.

The teenagers spoke as they attended a memorial service Wednesday for the more than 19,000 Israeli soldiers who have died since the state was founded in 1948. Memorial Day began after sundown Tuesday, with sirens calling the nation to observe a moment of silence. Television and radio stations aired stories of the fallen and of the families who grieve for them. Thousands visited cemeteries.

Memorial Day ended at sundown Wednesday, and the nation’s 53rd Independence Day began, in an annual, deliberately wrenching juxtaposition of the tragedy and triumph of the Jewish state’s birth and survival.

“This connection between Memorial Day and Independence Day is very important, especially for the young generation, because for us Israelis, sadness and happiness go together,” said Aliza Kramer, 58, a retired teacher born in Kfar Sava.

Kramer joined the city’s annual Mourners’ March down Weizmann Street to the military cemetery Wednesday morning. She has made the half-mile trek every year since her older brother, Ehud Elad, was killed on the first day of the 1967 Middle East War. A 31-year-old tank commander when he died in the Sinai desert, Elad is buried here along with more than 200 other residents of Kfar Sava who have fallen in the nation’s wars.

Kramer nodded in approval at the schoolchildren, dressed in the blue and white of the Israeli flag, who lined the street and watched silently as the mourners passed them by.

“They are taught why people died for this country, and it strengthens their connection to the land,” she said. “Our lives here are difficult, but if we persevere, we will prevail. I don’t believe the state asks too much of its citizens--I believe that people can give even more.”

Across the nation, neither the hundreds of thousands of Israeli flags fluttering from homes, offices and cars, nor public entertainment could take people’s minds off the tense security and the sense that the bloody fight with the Palestinians is far from over.

“People are down,” said Rafael Kaffa, 42, owner of the Holiday Services travel agency in Kfar Sava. One of the recent bombs exploded a few feet from his storefront, injuring a friend.

“This feeling is worse than the feeling you have in war,” Kaffa said. “In war, you do something--fight or go to the bomb shelter. Now you feel that there is no defense, that you have no security. These celebrations tonight are just an attempt to change the mood for a few hours.”

Citing a poll, the newspaper Yediot Aharonot said the nation is in a sour mood.

According to the survey, 79% of respondents said they were more worried “by the situation in the country” now than they were before the Palestinian revolt against Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip erupted in September. Sixty-one percent said they believe Israeli society is more egotistical than it was five years ago, and 49% said Israelis are less tolerant toward different attitudes and types of behavior.

“Less tolerant, more egotistical, more worried, close to despair: This is how Israelis view themselves on their 53rd Independence Day,” wrote Sever Plotzker in his analysis of the poll. “Gone is the basic joy of life which was the leading Israeli motto since [the state’s] establishment, gone is our endless optimism, reflected in the most famous Israeli expression over the last 50 years: Everything will be OK.”

Only 23% of those polled, Plotzker said, believed that in another 50 years there will be peace between Israel and its neighbors.

In Kfar Sava, Mayor Yitzhak Wald said that despite the grim atmosphere, city officials never contemplated canceling the public celebrations.

“I was born in Kfar Sava,” said the 62-year-old Wald. “I remember the founders’ stories of how this community was destroyed three times from the time of the First World War. Now there are 80,000 people living here.

“This is a very serious time, but we have confronted many problems in the past,” he said. “In spite of the situation, we are not going to give up. We’re going to celebrate because we are stubborn enough to continue on in spite of all the threats, in spite of all the attacks.”