Mount Herzl is Israel's Arlington. Unlike the military cemetery in Washington, where the graves are spread across a sea of grass, the site where Israeli soldiers who died for the country are buried is distributed in plots spread across the hill. Demarcated by stones on slate or granite floors, many of the graves are covered with green hedges, where small Israeli flags are nailed.
Visiting this cemetery is taking a tour of the history of a country marked by war since its controversial founding on May 14, 1948. The Arab-Israeli confrontation of that year is for Israel its War of Independence, but then many others came. war conflicts and military operations. Each plot groups those who died in each conflict: from the Lebanon war (1982) – which Israel calls Operation Peace for Galilee – to the Sinai or Suez war (1956), called here Operation Kadesh. There are also mass graves, such as one for those killed in the Battle of Jenin (1948) or a space for Jewish paratroopers who fought with the Allies during World War II.
In the current war in Gaza – which as of yesterday had claimed 18,787 Palestinian lives – 116 Israeli soldiers have already died during ground combat against the al-Qasam and al-Quds Brigades, especially harsh in urban centers such as Khan Younis and Gaza City. Several of those killed were reservists who were called up after the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7; The Islamist organization also killed 329 soldiers that day.
Not all soldiers killed in Gaza are being buried on Mount Herzl; It is a right to rest there for soldiers who have disappeared in the line of duty, but the last word lies with their families, and that is why many are buried in their places of residence.
There is almost no one in the cemetery, but in one of the plots there is a girl sitting on a bench, crying. She approached me and she asked me for a handkerchief. I ask her if she has come to visit any relatives and she says no. Her name is Naomi. "Are you OK? Why are you crying, then?” I say. And then she explains to me that that plot is shared by soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war against Hamas – 71 Israelis and 2,310 Palestinians died – and in incidents on the Lebanese border as a result of Hizbullah attacks. “I am very sorry for what is happening in my country, these soldiers died in the north and the south, in Lebanon and Gaza, as is happening now,” she alleges. “It's a difficult feeling to explain if you're not Israeli,” she adds.
Very distressed, Noemí tells me that she is a reservist and that night she has to join her base, in a destination that does not involve risk. I ask him what he thinks of the fact that so many innocent people are dying in Gaza from Israeli bombs. Very politely, he reminds me of what Hamas did on October 7, although he adds that he doesn't like anyone dying. "But…". Those ellipses mean what Israelis unanimously think. Bombing Gaza is the only way to end Hamas.
Mount Herzl is managed by the World Zionist Organization (WSO) and from the cemetery, via a path on the hill, you can access Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum. At the entrance to the necropolis there is also a museum dedicated to Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), creator of modern Zionism, founder of the WSO and considered the father of the State of Israel. His tomb presides over the place. Located on a large esplanade at the entrance to the site and placed in the center of a large circle with the Star of David, Herzl's tomb concentrates the official events for Independence Day every May 14.
Very close is the space where Israeli leaders rest: presidents, prime ministers or leaders of the Knesset. And their wives. All the graves are the same – smooth, black and sober parallelepipeds – except one, where Yitzhak Rabin and his wife, Leah, are located. It is rather a monument, also sober, half white and half black, where the prime minister assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist who hated Rabin for signing the Oslo agreements with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat rests. The other architect of that frustrated peace pact, Shimon Peres, rests right next to it.
As with soldiers' graves, there is hardly any stone on the graves of Israeli leaders. Stones that Jews traditionally place on the tomb to make it difficult for the soul of the deceased to leave the tomb where, according to the Talmud, he continues to dwell for a time after death.
