Free Republic

Israeli threats, not Obama's entreaties, saved embassy staff in Cairo during 2011 crisis. Speaking at a Foreign Ministry ceremony on the eve of Yom HaZikaron, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu revealed that Israel had threatened Egypt during the 2011 Cairo embassy crisis. During the event on Tuesday, held to honor the memory of 16 Foreign Service members who were killed in the line of duty overseas, Netanyahu emphasized that Israel was willing to go anywhere and take any action to protect the lives of its servicemen and women. The Prime Minister noted that during the siege of Israel’s embassy in Cairo...

No day of the year in Israel is more agonizing than Yom Ha-Zikaron—the Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars. For 24 hours, the country’s unceasing sniping gives way to a pervasive sense of national unity not apparent at any other moment; honor and sanctity can be felt everywhere. Israel’s many military cemeteries are filled to capacity with anguished families visiting the graves of loved ones. Restaurants are shuttered. One of the country’s television stations does nothing but list the names of the 23,000 men and women who gave their lives to defend the Jewish state, some of them...

Israel plans to establish a national war monument in Jerusalem to honor the memory of the 22,684 soldiers and security personnel who have fallen defending the land of Israel since 1860 – the year the first Jews left Jerusalem’s Old City walls to settle other parts of the country. On Sunday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced plans to erect the new monument, during a ceremony at its future location on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. “As a society we owe a great moral debt to bereaved families,” Barak said. “In its 62 years of independence this country has stood before complicated...