By Justin Pozmanter

Today, Israel remembers those who gave their lives so that we may live. Yom Hazikaron is a powerfully emotional day. I wasn’t fully prepared for the feelings this day evokes when I moved here.

Yesterday, driving down the main street in Raanana with my children, we saw every single street sign covered with black, and inscribed with the name of someone who died for the state of Israel and their age when they fell. Below is a picture of just one of the hundreds of street signs covered in this way:

For 10 minutes down Ahuza Street, we looked at them, knowing they represent just a tiny fraction of the horrible cost Israel has paid to exist. Most of the signs showed men and women far younger than I am now, taken from their parents, siblings and friends, and robbed of the opportunity to build families of their own, or watch their children grow.

Then the siren sounded. The siren is piercing, it fills your mind, you feel it in your heart, your bones, your very soul. Many thoughts and emotions run through my head every time I hear it. The first is sadness for those we all lost. Israel is tiny. It is always striking how much of a familial feel exists here. I didn’t personally know any of the those who perished, but in some way, I feel as if I did.

The second thing you simply can’t shake is the knowledge that the same siren blaring at any other time would send us rushing to a safe room for cover.

However, the emotion that overwhelms me is gratitude. Gratitude to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for Israel, for the Jewish people, for me and my family.

Yom Hazikaron comes shortly after another day of remembrance when the siren sounds in Israel, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. On Yom Hazikaron this year, we mourn 23,928 fallen (God willing, that number will not change before next year). On Yom HaShoah, we remember 6,000,000.

23,928 is far too many, and for anyone who has lost a loved one, even that single loss is devastating, but the difference in the magnitude of those numbers has profound meaning. In less than ten years preceding the birth of the state of Israel in 1948, 6,000,000 Jews lost their lives because they had no place to go. In the pre-state Yishuv, plus the 73 years since the state’s founding, 23,928 heroes have given their lives so we will never again have no place to go. Their sacrifice is why over 6,000,000 Jews can now live in the state of Israel.

The world has not changed all that much. Evil still exists. Iran has nearly the same designs on the Middle East and the Jews living here as the Nazis had for Europe and the Jews living there. The difference is Israel.

So amidst the sadness and mourning of Yom Hazikaron, I also feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of us as well as those currently serving in the IDF, border police and security agencies. And I am so thankful to live at a time when there is a robust, strong and thriving Jewish state.  

Justin Pozmanter is a former foreign policy advisor to Minister Tzachi Hanegbi. Before making Aliyah, he worked at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and practiced law. Read full bio here.