Ministers skip Yom Kippur commemoration
Bereaved families furious to learn no State official to attend memorial ceremony for 780 victims of Yom Kippur War due to delay in Trajtenberg vote
Bereaved families were furious to discover Sunday no government official was present at the memorial ceremonies for 780 fallen soldiers of the Yom Kippur War, held at Kiryat Shaul military cemetery in Tel Aviv.
According to Yad Lebanim Chairman Eli Ben Shem, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon was scheduled to attend but had canceled three days before the ceremony. His replacement, Minister Yossi Peled, also called off his participation at the last minute.
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"I've been organizing the national memorial services for the past 16 years and I cannot recall such a disgraceful incident," he said. "Thousands of parents demanded that we don't start the ceremony until a government official arrives."
Some 4,000 bereaved family members grew extremely angry when they realized that the government officials won't attend the ceremony due to a delay on the vote over the social committee's Trajtenberg Report, and many participants demanded to stop the ceremony.
One of the scheduled participants, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, was late to arrive.
"They didn't even send a deputy minister to represent the government," claimed Ben Shem. "While the government is busy discussing social justice they create a distortion elsewhere. The ministers conveyed a harsh message to the fallen and their families – the State of Israel doesn't want to remember that a few decades ago some 2,700 soldiers died to defend this country."
The Yom Kippur commemorative services held at Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv is considered the second biggest ceremony following the Mount Herzl commemoration ceremony.
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