Remembering Ilan - and moving on

Israelis are good at moving on; perhaps too good. Americans can't seem to

Alan D. Abbey|Published: 02.09.06 , 11:08

The third anniversary of the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster passed last week (February 1 on the English calendar, January 29 on the Hebrew calendar) with little fanfare here.

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Rona Ramon, widow of fallen Israeli astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon, and several other Columbia shuttle family members here at Rona's invitation. Ynet (Hebrew) devoted a brief to it; Ynetnews didn't even get to it. A small group of American scientists came to the country to dedicate spots in the Ramon Crater (not named after Ilan) in the south after the Columbia Seven. That barely made a ripple in the media, as well.

Mentioning that the media barely mentioned it is not meant as a criticism. It's simply a reflection of the way Israelis deal with tragedy and loss - and how we differ from Americans.

Israelis - to our sorrow - have had to learn to deal with loss on a continual basis. Few days go by without some sort of tragedy that touches more than an immediate family circle. In our small country, virtually everyone is touched by virtually every tragedy. Case in point: An IDF soldier died last week in a parachute accident. I didn't know him, but my rabbi did. His children went to school with the boy before he went into the army. A friend of mine once played football with the boy's father. Another friend played in the same football league. It made the prayer for soldiers we repeat every week in synagogue much more poignant last Shabbat.

A friend and former colleague of mine was badly injured in a bus bombing two years ago. The daughter of a former colleague died in the bombing of the Sbarro pizza parlor in 2001. We lived less than 100 meters from the scene of a cafe bombing in 2003 that left half a dozen dead. I still regularly frequent that cafe. And I'm only in the country for six years, and did not attend school or serve in the Army - which would have made my circle that much wider and more inclusive of a broader swath of Israeli society.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Internal calculation

Things are different in America, I think. The continued wrangling over the memorial and reconstruction of the 9/11 bombings in New York is an example of an almost unhealthy obsession with remembrance.

A Texas memorial ceremony in honor of the Columbia disaster also honored two U.S. Forest Service employees who died in a helicopter crash during recovery efforts. According to the Associated Press, the event included a bagpipe tribute, a 21-gun salute and a preview of a documentary film being produced to raise funds for a proposed three-phase memorial.

This seems to be one of those times that each of us could learn from the other. Israelis are almost too good at moving on. The Jewish people's longtime slogan could have been, "Never forget." The 2,000-year exile from Zion was never forgotten: Longing for Eretz Israel has been expressed in daily prayer for 20 centuries since the Romans' near-total eradication of the Jewish presence here. Since the Holocaust, the words, "Never forgive," have been added to our "slogan." But certainly the "never forget" part has been inked into our collective unconscious the way Auschwitz captives were tattooed. That the "never forgive, never forget" approach has been adopted by Palestinians who still allegedly hold the keys to homes in Haifa and Jaffa they lost in 1948 only shows how widespread our influence has been.

Yet Israelis seem to have made the internal calculation that the only way to go on is to go on. We pause once a year for Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, and the country is tied up in a paroxysm of grief and maudlin remembrance, enhanced by non-stop tear-jerkers on TV about all of our fallen soldiers. But we come out of that sad day with fireworks, parties and celebrations commemorating Israeli Independence Day. We move on.

Genuine hero in age of tarnished idols

America hasn't known loss on such a large and national scale, perhaps ever. With the astonishing and horrible exceptions of Pearl Harbor's bombing at the opening of World War Two, and the 9/11 terror attacks continental America has never been under siege. Of course, that's a good thing. Military conscription doesn't exist in the U.S. anymore, and so the losses in Iraq and Afghanistan are not felt widely. Except in a few military communities, the vast majority of America's nearly 300 million are quite distanced from the reality of soldiers dying.

So, America deals with death and loss on an abstract, even intellectual basis. And sometimes makes more of it because of that.

As I said, here death is more visceral and personal (the contrast between an Israeli funeral and an American one - Jewish or not is another reminder of that).

That said, it is a shame that the third anniversary of the passing of Ilan Ramon was so quiet. He was a genuine hero in an age of tarnished idols, and his life could and should set an example for the rest of us. I, for one, have not forgotten about him.

Alan D. Abbey is Founding Editor of Ynetnews. In 2003 he wrote a book about Ramon. His email is alan@abbeycontent.com