The silence that speaks

There is a moment, during Yom HaZikaron, when Israel truly stops. Sirens go off, cars freeze in the middle of the road, people step out and stand still. It’s not symbolic, it’s not just ceremony. It’s an entire country looking at itself and recognizing the cost of its own existence.

This year, though, that silence feels heavier. It’s not only historical memory. It’s something alive, something still bleeding.

A memory that is not the past

For many Europeans, memory is something you study, archive, and revisit once a year. In Israel, it doesn’t work like that. Memory is part of everyday life. It has names, faces, families. Every fallen soldier is not an abstract symbol, but someone who was sitting at the table just yesterday.

That’s the difference that often gets lost from the outside: security is never taken for granted, normal life is never guaranteed.

That is why Yom HaZikaron is more than a commemoration. It is the foundation of the State itself. A reminder that Israel exists because people fought for it, and continues to exist because people still do.

After October 7, nothing is the same

In recent months, after the trauma of October 7, this day has taken on an even deeper meaning. You don’t even need to go into details to understand it. For Israeli society, something existential has been reopened.

Not a political crisis. Not just a diplomatic tension. A question of survival.

And here is where Europe often struggles to understand: Israel is not a country like any other. It is the home of the Jewish people, a people that throughout history has never truly had guaranteed safety. Without Israel, that safety simply does not exist.

Zionism: a word that divides, a reality that protects

Today, the word “Zionism” is often emptied of meaning or turned into something negative, especially in certain Western circles. But just looking at Yom HaZikaron is enough to understand what it really means.

It is not an abstract ideology. It is a concrete answer to centuries of persecution, expulsions, pogroms, all the way to the Holocaust.

Zionism is the idea that the Jewish people have the right to a home, to a state, to defend themselves. It is not born out of aggression, but out of necessity. And every name read on Yom HaZikaron is proof that this necessity has not disappeared.

The gap with Europe

There is also a political issue that cannot be ignored. While Israel remembers its fallen, part of Europe seems increasingly distant, sometimes even ambiguous. Balanced statements, generic condemnations, attempts to put on the same level those who defend a state and those who want to destroy it.

This raises an uncomfortable question: have we really understood what Israel represents? Or are we judging it with categories that simply don’t hold up in reality?

Because Israel is not just a Western democracy in the Middle East. It is also, and above all, a refuge. The only refuge.

The price of freedom

Yom HaZikaron reminds us of something we often prefer to forget: freedom has a cost. In Israel, that cost has names and surnames. Families who return to military cemeteries every year. Young people who know that defending their country is not a theoretical option.

Maybe that’s what makes Israel so different, and so hard to fully understand from more stable societies. There, security is something built every day, not something automatically given.

A memory that demands responsibility

In the end, Yom HaZikaron is not only about mourning. It is also a call to responsibility. For Israelis, of course, but also for those watching from the outside.

It means asking yourself where you stand when a country is fighting to exist. It means recognizing that behind every geopolitical debate there are real lives. And above all, it means refusing the comfort of indifference.

Because if Israel were to stop existing, it would not only be the end of a state. It would be the failure of an idea: that a persecuted people can finally live freely in their own land.

The deeper meaning of this day

This year, Yom HaZikaron is not just about memory. It is about awareness. It shows that history is not over, that certain threats have not disappeared, that some battles are not finished.

And maybe, for this reason, it is more important than ever to look at Israel for what it really is: not a problem to solve, but a reality to understand.

A home built through pain, defended with determination, and still today — despite everything — deeply necessary.