The siren just sounded

2 minutes of silence, to remember the 22,305 people who fell in battle since the establishment of the first Jewish neighborhoods outside Jerusalem's Old City wall in 1860, the date of the beginning of the fatality count. 22,305 people who never got to grow old. 233 names just this year. Most were young, some were older veterans who finally succumbed to their injuries. Each one is too many. While to some of you in the United States this figure may not seem that large compared to America's losses in World War II or even Vietnam, the entire population of Israel today is only 7,150,000, making this a terrible loss indeed.

Yesterday my 6 year old son asked me if we would visit him in the cemetary if he were killed in a war. I cannot express how sad it makes me that he knows enough about evil in the world to ask that question at age 6.

As the country marks Memorial Day 2007 and prepares to celebrate its 59th year of independence, amid both celebrations and ever present security warnings it behooves us to remember how dear a price we paid, so that we can try ever harder to ensure that future generations don't have to.