PILLARS OF ZION: PART 2

The second foundation of the country is Memorial Day which follows almost immediately after Holocaust Remembrance Day. These are the two days that the country memorializes the 23,000+ people who have died "for" Israel since 1860 when the first Jewish settlers came to Palestine. It includes everyone from soldiers, police officers, civilians on buses, accidental death from friendly fire, even the poor schmuk who falls off his tank and is run over. And of course they keep track of everyone's name and the circumstances of their death.

This video was shot in the middle of the busy Jerusalem open market at the moment the 11a.m. siren went off. It's 2 minutes long so if you can wait, at least look at the frames from about 26-30. You will see in the background 2 figures, dressed kind of like Ultra-orthodox, walking among the frozen crowds. Here is the deal: everyone in Israel stands motionless for 2 minutes on Memorial day except (me who is moving my camera, ugly American!) and a certain group of ultra-orthodox Jews. They are protesting the fact that Israel is so secular (think Sodom and Gomorrah) and has strayed too far from God. As a protest, they continue to walk around doing the siren, which as you can imagine REALLY pisses people off. Oh, did I mention that the Ultras get large subsidies from the government so they can study in the Yeshivas and not work or go into the army.


At night there are huge gatherings of people in parks all over the country with heavy memorial services. At a park near my house they put up a big screen and showed pictures of people who had died. Here is a picture of a girl who was killed on the #18 bus several years ago. All the media is given over to the memorial, the movie channels on TV just show pictures of burning candles, the radio just plays sad, sad Hebrew songs, the Malls close early (so you know this is a big deal.) The newspapers which just yesterday had wall-to-wall Holocaust stories now have wall-to-wall memorial/war stories.

In the morning of the second Memorial Day I went up to Ammunition Hill which was a critical battle for Jerusalem in June 1967. The speaker, one of the paratroopers, pointed out that armies throughout history have spent years, actually hundreds of years trying to capture Jerusalem (i.e. Crusades) and his group captured it in about 3 days. This is an enormous source of pride. I watched a fascinating, swoopy-duppy multi-media show of the battle with film, and a great interactive map, (the red is Jordanian forces, the blue Israeli forces) It was so cool!

SWINE FLU UPDATE

The big deal here is not that 2 people back from Mexico have swine flu, but the name of the flu itself. The question was raised, "What if an orthodox Rabbi, gets SWINE flu?" This would be a huge blasphemy and there were many cartoons in the paper on this matter of great urgency. So immediately the name of the disease was changed to something like D1D and the sanctity of the Kosher rules was preserved