Where Politics End

This morning I went to Har Herzl for the Yom Hazikaron tekes. The actual ceremony is at one corner of the cemetery, surrounded with tons of security, while the people that come stand in front of the graves of fallen soldiers and listen over the loudspeakers. This year I decided to go into the ceremony itself. I went through three security checks, one very tight as I had made the dumb decision of buying steel toe shoes when I was last in America. I missed the beginning of the tekes, but I was there for Ehud Olmerts speech, the laying of flowers by heads of different departments (mayor of the city, head of police, Idf, etc.) 21 gun salute, and then the singing of hatikva. While I didnt find it to be a very religious ceremony, I did find it to be very moving. Two things greatly bothered me during the ceremony. One, a girl turned to her friend as Olmert started to speak and said loudly, "let's get out of her, I dont want to waste my time listening to him." The second thing was a group of kids wearing Gush Katif T-shirts, "We wont forget, we wont forgive." There is a time and place for everything, and Har Herzl on Yom HaZikaron is not the place for any of that. As I walked into the cemetery, I thought how sad it is that the only time our nation stands together is to memorialize the dead. Why can't we stand together and help secure our future?