Tzipiyah.com

Sadness and joy,
drizzling sunbeams,
remember, remember,
and fill your soul with memories you never witnessed;

Remember, remember,
join yourself up again to the
massive Whole.

Grieve, shed tears,
make room for the darkness
of the families, children destroyed forever,
though they were never your children.

Remember the blood-stained uniforms,
the smell of explosions and darkness and death,
though it was not your nose
that smelled them.

And remember the joy,
fireworks and flags,
elation and trepidation,
fighting fiercely, joyfully for your lives -
though it was not you
who fought, whose heart rejoiced.

To be one of the Nation,
to be one with the Nation,
my mind must remember,
my soul must remember.

To be a soul holding hands
with those before and those after,
with those beside me and those far away,
I must remember.
We must remember.

Taste the joy,
the fear, the darkness,
the light, the death,
the throngs of jubilant rejoicers and
the full, silent cemeteries
in the moments of silence.
Remember the stories.
Remember today.

—–
* Pictures 1, 2, 6 & 7 are of the Gush Katif Human Chain, and are from this site. There are more wonderful pictures there; go and look!
* Picture 3 comes from this page.
* Picture 4 comes from this page.
* I’m not sure where I got Picture 5 from.

Part of The Yom Haatzmaut Project

1. May 15, 1967: Naomi Shemer’s Yerushalayim Shel Zahav first sung at the Israeli Music Festival, and what came three weeks later…

2.
July 4, 1976: Operation Yonatan
…with every passing day you acquire a complete world. Now, this very moment, you’ve gained something. From every mistake you make you gain a little. Every single moment of your life is a whole epoch. Do you remember Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”? In one of the stanzas, he says: ‘If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds worth of distance run, Yours is the earth…’ Because each and every minute is made up of seconds and of even briefer fragments of time, and every tiny fragment ought not to be allowed to pass in vein.(Self-Portrait Of A Hero)
We come with a simple message to the Council: we are proud of what we have done because we have demonstrated to the world that a small country, in Israel’s circumstances, with which the members of this Council are by now all too familiar, the dignity of man, human life and human freedom constitute the highest values. We are proud not only because we have saved the lives of over a hundred innocent people—men, women and children—but because of the significance of our act for the cause of human freedom.(Chaim Herzog)

3. February 11, 1986: Natan Sharansky arrives in Israel

4.
February 17, 1977: Team Captain, Tal Brody leads Maccabi Tel Aviv to an upset over the Red Army Team of Moscow sending his team to the European Cup Finals
אנחנו במפה! ואנחנו נשארים במפה - לא רק בספורט, בהכל
“We are on the map. We are staying on the map, not only in sports, but in everything.” (Tal Brody)