The state ceremony to mark Israel’s Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers and those who were killed in terror attacks took place at the cemetery at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on Tuesday.
Present at the ceremony were Israeli dignitaries, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir.
“On this sacred mountain, Mount Herzl, lie generations of heroes and heroines. The wound is deeper than time. Time passes, but the pain never fades," Netanyahu said.
He later stated that the Iranian regime had planned to carry out a nuclear holocaust against Israel.
“The ayatollah regime in Iran planned another Holocaust. It sought to destroy us with nuclear bombs and thousands of ballistic missiles,” Netanyahu said.
“Had we not acted against this existential threat with determination and boldness, the names of the death sites, Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, could have joined the names of the extermination camps of the Holocaust: Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka. But that did not happen."
"But that did not happen because together with our great friend, the United States, we crushed the Iranian regime's machinery of destruction in time. We removed an immediate existential threat. This is the essence of the campaign, to ensure that the thread of life of the people of Israel is not severed!"
'My world collapsed': Netanyahu remembers his brother
The prime minister had begun his speech by speaking of his slain brother, Yoni Netanyahu.
"My brother Yoni, who is buried here, fell 50 years ago.”
Netanyahu explained that he had been an Israeli student in the United States at the time he heard the news of his brother’s loss.
“My brother Ido called me and told me that our eldest brother had fallen in battle. My world collapsed,” he said.
“The moment I told my parents the bitter news of Yoni’s fall was the hardest moment of my life. Fifty years have passed since then, and there is not a day that I do not think of you, Yoni.”
"Alongside the pain, this pain that never fades, and I have heard this from many of you, my brothers and sisters, we are speaking of a family of heroism. You rightly told me: we do not remember only how the sons and daughters died, we remember mainly how they lived, and what they fought for," he added.
Netanyahu went on to add that Israel had shown resilience since the October 7 Hamas attacks in 2023.
"Throughout thousands of years of our existence, we have stood many times on the brink of annihilation. We were persecuted by our enemies. We paid heavy prices to defend our homeland and preserve our heritage," he said.
"Yet in the darkest moments, the inner essence of our people was revealed, like a solid rock at the heart of the abyss. From the abyss of October 7, we surged forward, guided by the essence, to strike back fiercely against those who seek our lives, across seven fronts."
In later remarks at the state Remembrance Day ceremony for victims of terror, Netanyahu said that Israel’s military and political pressure brought back the hostages held in Hamas captivity.
In response to these remarks, someone in the crowd yelled: “Some [hostages] were killed in tunnels!”
At a later ceremony focusing on victims of terror, Herzog said that terror has taken the lives of "precious treasures with terrible cruelty."
“Their loss is a bleeding wound in the heart of the entire nation, a wound both new and old, a wound that continues to bleed," he added.
Ben-Gvir praises police on Remembrance Day
An Israel Police Remembrance Day ceremony was also held at Mount Herzl, where National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, addressed bereaved families and officials.
Speaking on the October 7 Hamas attacks, he described them as a test that was a painful moment but also "a moment of great opportunity, of great spirit,” for the country to reestablish deterrence.
Ben-Gvir said the attacks offered “an opportunity to change the concept, an opportunity to reestablish deterrence, the standing of the IDF, of the police, of the prison service, of Israel as a power.”
“Some of these opportunities we embraced with both hands.”
"I am proud of our police, who on October 7, officers, fighters, men and women, left their homes, sometimes with only a handgun against Hamas’s heavy weaponry, and succeeded in saving the situation," he said.
“I am proud of our prison service, which has completely changed its previous approach.
“Today the ‘summer camps’ are over, there is order in the prisons, there is governance, there is determination, there is sovereignty.”
The far-right minister has led reforms in Israel’s police and prisons, as well as gun reforms expanding eligibility for communities across the country to carry handguns. His prison reforms have included significantly worsening conditions for prisoners and terrorists.
He added that he was proud of Israel’s military, the Mossad, and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) for eliminating Yahya Sinwar, Hassan Nasrallah, and Ali Khamenei, “along with tens of thousands of terrorists.
“I say here, before the graves of the heroes and the righteous: our duty is not only to remember, our duty is to ‘be worthy,’” Ben-Gvir continued.
“Together we will build, together we will continue the journey, together we will carry forward the legacy they left us, and with God’s help, together we are winning, and will achieve total victory over our enemies, so that our children can sit here in peace,” he added.
“May God avenge their blood,” he said, and laid a wreath in memory of the fallen at the ceremony.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended a separate ceremony at the military cemetery in Kfar Etzion, where he said that while Israel has been in the midst of a campaign with “great achievements,” there have also been costs.
“Alongside peak moments and highs, there have also been lows, but our spirit remains strong,” he said.
“At the moment of truth, in the tank, in the aircraft, and at the post, we all stand as one fist in the historic struggle between good and evil. And in the end, good will prevail."