Sirens have come to mean different things in Israel.
They have always rung out, like they did on Thursday morning, to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day – and like they’ll do twice next week as the nation mourns the fallen on Remembrance Day.
But we’ve also gotten used to the piercing sirens that signal an imminent rocket or missile attack (or at least we’ve gotten accustomed to them – it’s never something one gets used to): whether originating in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran or Yemen.
It’s a sound the residents of Israel’s South have internalized for nearly two decades as Hamas launched wave after wave of rockets, and in the North, where Hezbollah made the lives of residents there a bundle of nerves for years.
One Israeli posted on X/Twitter trying to explain the difference in Thursday’s siren for those who perished at the hands of the Nazis.
“I was preparing my kids for today’s siren, explaining that it wasn’t an air raid siren and they didn’t have to go to a bomb shelter – that it was to remember when something bad happened to the Jews,” he wrote.
Thursday’s siren was to remember something bad that happened to Jews; the other sirens are alerts to prevent something bad from happening to the Jews. That’s one critical element that has changed since Israel was founded.
Another thing the siren we heard on Thursday is designed to do, like the shofar that is blown on Yom Kippur, is to wake us up, shake us out of our complacency, and encourage us to examine what we might be doing wrong and to then take action.
Anyone following the public discourse since well before October 7, 2023, knows that the country is in a crisis that could lead to a civil war. Since Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel, and the continued captivity of the remaining hostages, the level of vitriol and incitement on both sides of the political spectrum has only intensified.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid warned earlier this week that another political assassination is in the offing, like the one that gutted the country in 1995 when prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down. Although he blamed the government for creating the environment that makes such a disaster ripe, everyone is to blame.
President Isaac Herzog related to the deep fracture in Israeli society on Wednesday night at the official state ceremony for Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem. The situation has become so bad that he prefaced his speech, which is supposed to focus solely on the atrocities of the Holocaust, with an urgent appeal to all citizens of the country:
“My sisters and brothers, citizens of Israel: as the voice of those heroic Holocaust survivors, and of a vast public terrified by the polarization and division tearing us apart – I appeal to you from the depths of my heart: Let us unite, all the House of Israel,” he implored.
“Let us transform these days – from now until Independence Day, the Ten Days of Sanctity – into a historic moment of national responsibility. Let us lower the flames. Let us mend our hearts... Let us mourn together, yearn together; let us hurt together – and yes, today as well, let us stand tall – together,” he continued, adding that nobody should rest until all of the hostages have been returned to Israel.
Letting the sirens in Israel have the same affect as the shofar
Like the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – the ten days of repentance – we echo Herzog’s call. Let the days between Holocaust Remembrance Day and our national Remembrance Day – followed immediately by Independence Day – become “ten days of sanctity,” where the flames are lowered, and the realization that Israel is only as strong as the unity of its people becomes apparent.
Let the sirens that we heard on Thursday and that we’ll hear next week twice on Remembrance Day have the same effect as the shofar on Yom Kippur – to wake us up to the tragedy that could potentially take place.
And just as importantly, we should realize that a siren that prevents something bad from happening to the Jews – instead of one that recalls bad things that happened to the Jews – is never something to be taken for granted.