This year's Remembrance Day is going to be different from the ones we've experienced so far. Every year, I will leave the IDF wreath in Hadera cemetery as part of the official memorial service near the siren and I will visit the grave of my good friend Yaron. Careful year after year to gather at the grave with the family, this time it will be sadder. 

This loneliness and emptiness may help us to understand bereavement better. The Hebrew word for us: space, illustrates the emptiness, the absence of the sudden and eternal being that bereavement decrees upon us. So far, Remembrance Day has been a day of gathering, a day of remembrance, a day of warrior fraternity, of bad guys for a brief moment and in front of the grave, continuing to carry on the same roles they held on that damn day of farewell.

The bereaved family does not need Memorial Day, it is doomed to perpetual memory - we need this day. We need this closeness, and this closeness is our command and value. We are committed to memory and learning, we want to declare and show that we have not forgotten - we have not forgotten anything and we have learned something. We have not forgotten the feelings, the camaraderie of the bad, the joy of youth, the coping with the difficult challenges. And we learned! In truth, we learned quite a lot. For example, I learned from her late son Rayne, what a professional and meticulous but sensitive and loving command. I learned from the late Miron Pick about the value of the companies in creating confidence and trust within the team. I learned from the late Shlomi Cohen what adherence to the mission, striving for contact and personal sacrifice are.

On this different Memorial Day, we will be with you the bereaved families in our spirit, in shared memory and in telephone conversations. We will continue to ensure and see every day of military service - a day of holding promise to the fallen, doing their best to ensure the security of the State of Israel and its residents, and looking for any way to save lives. This is done by maintaining intelligence supremacy that ensures alertness and intelligence, border protection, and operational offensive initiative.

This year we will also do this by helping to deal with the Corona epidemic. Let our enemies know that the secret of our power comes from our special feelings for human life. It doesn't condemn us from heartbreak, on the contrary. It is this evil that drives the resolve, it drives the enthusiasm to act for the future of the security of the State of Israel. These bad times and mutual responsibility are pushing people to put their abilities and talents to the face of the plague that is plaguing us.

May the fallen man be blessed.



Major General Tamir Heyman is the head of the military