In another week, a somber atmosphere will descend upon us as we commemorate the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. The Holocaust, in which 6 million of our people were murdered. Immediately after the October 7 massacre, people rightly said that since the Holocaust there had not been an event as difficult for the Jewish people as what happened that day, when more than 1200 children, women, and men were coldbloodedly murdered, raped, and seriously maimed. Along with the innocent murdered for being Jewish or Israeli, 240 babies, women and men, elderly and infirm were kidnapped to Gaza. More than 130 are still there.
Some of them are no longer among the living. The lives of those remaining are in real and present danger and the negotiations are faltering. A week after Holocaust Remembrance Day, we will again be enveloped in a black cloud and commemorate the Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers, to which, unfortunately, many more names have been added since October. We will mourn our finest, who went to fight a just war over the future of the state and never returned. This quintessential Israeli transition between Memorial Day and Independence Day will be particularly difficult this year.
It will be different because of the delirious political system in which a minister in Israel, who was involved in an accident on the weekend, tells his colleagues that Israeli forces should shoot at those who raise their hands and surrender without the prime minister immediately condemning the remarks. It will be different because of the incomprehensible arrogance of our leaders, which raises concern that they do not really know where they are going.
It will be different because there is a feeling that there is no steady hand on the wheel. We are under pressure and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is rubbing his hands with glee. The return to the rhetoric of October 6 has invigorated him and let him once again harbor horrific intentions and actions, allowing him to up his demands for the release of the abductees every day. Just two months ago they spoke of 40 abductees, and now 20. He is playing and teasing us. Making outrageous demands, which are slowly all being accepted. The erosion is worrying.
On our side, they are pinning their hopes on an operation in Rafah. The plans were prepared, and approved by the senior minister and are waiting for the prime minister to give the go-ahead. I find it hard to see this happening in the coming two weeks, which will be dominated by Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day. Netanyahu fears that there will be more fatalities precisely on these sacred days for Israeli society. So he will postpone, and say that he is negotiating for the release of the abductees, and will do everything possible so that the Rafah operation commences only after Independence Day.
The resignation of IDF Military Intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, who admitted his share of responsibility for what happened, and the resignation of GO Central Command Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, who apparently had enough of the sticks being put in his wheels, will also serve as a lever to postpone any decision. We will follow the conduct of the prime minister and especially listen carefully to the speeches he will give at the Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day events, and hope for at least less arrogance and more mea culpa.
If we are disappointed, we will have to shout loudly that he who spoiled cannot be the one to fix. The time has come to take responsibility and set a quick date for elections, and until then not to approve any senior appointments. And it is expected of the prime minister and the government do everything to bring all the abductees home. Only then, as happened to the Jewish people after the Holocaust, will the process of healing and regrowth begin.
