JERUSALEM POST
‘Zikaron’
by Yishai Fleisher
May 10, 2016

…As the somber ceremony began, once again I eyed my surroundings, and saw families standing by graves all around me. Interspersed among them were other red berets, for only the Paratroopers Brigade has this custom of representing its fallen. At this moment more than any other, tears welled up, for I realized that this was about more than the personal tragedy of one fallen paratrooper, but was rather the day all of Israel remembered those who had laid down their lives in the attempt to build a home for the Jewish people. The red berets standing at the cemetery that day represented to me that successful effort of rebuilding the home we had lost so long ago. The dead came back to life in the form of a new generation of young soldiers who stood at the graves on the land which God had promised them. While the living cried, the dead now rested eternally in the bosom of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. READ MORE