(Communicated by the President’s Spokepserson) 

President Isaac Herzog spoke today (Sunday, 29 May 2022) at the memorial for Israel’s fallen soldiers from the Six-Day War and War of Attrition on Mount Herzl.
 
President Isaac Herzog’s full speech:
 
“Moshe Vapni was first and foremost an educator. Creative, daring, determined, and innovative, he captured the hearts of his students, enraptured his classes, and ultimately took upon himself the management of a school, which became his life’s project. He completely transformed the school, made its students who they are, what they became, and he created their world. He began his military service as a liaison in the Armored Corps during the reprisal operations and continued in the Sinai War. His brothers-in-arms described his voice, blaring out of their radio systems, as confident and calm, as projecting confidence in the terrible chaos of the battlefield. Just like the confidence that he instilled in his many students, who admired him; just like the confidence he instilled in his comrades, and in his family, which he lovingly created with his wife Batya—the family that became his life’s second project, but its most important one.
 
“In the middle of the Six-Day War, on 8 June 1967, 29 Iyar 5727, Moshe Vapni was killed in an artillery strike during a tank battle west of Bir Gifgafa in the Sinai. He left behind his young wife Batya and their two children, Zvi and Rivka.
 
“The author Israel Ehrlich met his widow, Batya Vapni, after the war and wrote thus: “She was sitting in her apartment, waiting for her four-year-old son to return from kindergarten. His food was already on the table. She waited, then said: ‘When Zvika sits down to eat, I tell him a story. Since his father fell in battle, not a day goes by without Zvika mentioning him. He asks me to tell him the story of the creation of the world, just as his father told him, and he calls it 'daddy’s story.'' Thus he wrote.
 
“When he fell in battle, Moshe Vapni’s story of the creation of the world became a painful reminder of the life that he did not get to live, of the students he did not get to teach at the school that has since been named after him—Moreshet Moshe in Ramat Gan—and of the worlds that he could no longer shape, of the endless longing that he left in his wife and children’s hearts.
 
“Ladies and gentlemen, that child, who asked to hear ‘daddy’s story,’ is Zvi Vapni, Ambassador Zvi Vapni, a Foreign Ministry diplomat for the past thirty years. He serves as my diplomatic advisor at the Office of the President and is here with us now. Zvi is continuing his father’s legacy, taking care of his mother Batya, may she have a long life; he has published books, he has served as Israel’s ambassador in several countries, and he is engaged in the worlds of Zionism, of service, of humanity.
 
“Dear beloved families, ladies and gentlemen, today we mark fifty-five years since the Six-Day War and the terrible and bloodstained war that followed it, the War of Attrition. We remember and recall the sons and daughters, the beloved heroes, who did not return from the battlefield. All of them, in the legacy they left us, in the values they instilled in us—just like Moshe Vapni—continue to live with us, and to stay with you, dear bereaved families, and with us—day by day, hour by hour.
 
“Ladies and gentlemen, for many of us, the period of the Six-Day War and the War of Attrition combines our national and personal memories. My personal memory of the Six-Day War is a childhood memory and my first memory, and my wife Michal’s first memory, of Israel’s wars. I was six years old. I remember the existential anxiety hanging in the air, the ditch we dug in the yard, and the assistance we gave our next-door neighbors. I remember sitting in the ditch, as the Jordanian artillery in Qalqilya roared above us and destroyed houses around us. They were pointed at us, at the neighborhood that was home to so many General Staff officers and to Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. And of course, I will never forget the voice of my father, Maj. Gen. Chaim Herzog, serving as the “national soother” as Kol Israel Radio’s military commentator, blaring out of the radio as the cannons roared above us and fears of Auschwitz gripped an entire nation.
 
“Out of the darkness and anxiety in the bomb shelters, with peak excitement, my father described the stages of the war, step by step, and of course the moments of victory, our return to a united Jerusalem, thus: 'Every child and infant will speak of this until the day he dies. How fortunate that we have merited to see our IDF, headed by the Israel’s Lord of Hosts, standing at the gates of the city of eternity.'
 
“Indeed, these were days of euphoria, of joy, of unity. They were followed by the War of Attrition, a difficult, demanding, and protracted war all along the border with Egypt, which claimed new victims every day. In both wars, both the Six-Day War and the War of Attrition, we had our warriors’ heroism, courage, determination, commitment to their goal, devotion, and sacrifice. These warriors were, in my father’s words, “the silver platter that became the golden gate of Jerusalem.”
 
“Ladies and gentlemen, the comprehensive victory of the Six-Day War did not come out of nowhere. It was first and foremost the product of a long and protracted process of preparedness. It was a process that we appeared to have forgotten at the end of the war.
 
“The last few weeks have also proven to us once more how much we need our security forces, and how much we need them to be strong and permanently ready and superior to any rival or enemy. Warriors and commanders, of the highest caliber and with the greatest skills, suffused with a sense of mission and motivation—and of course we must remunerate them appropriately. We must say thanks to those who defend us day by day, hour by hour, in all the security forces and in the Israel Defense Forces, in the professional army, the whole standing army, and in reserves. Because without them, we have nothing. The recent terror wave has caused us immense pain, but it does not weaken us. Today, too, we are ready and prepared for any scenario. The warriors in our security forces, the IDF, the Shin Bet, Mossad, public security, the Police, the Prison Service, the Border Police, intelligence, rescue and emergency, are continuing the legacy of the sons and daughters who fell in battle with devotion, with a sense of service, with a willingness to defend the nation and the homeland, and with an ability to always defeat those who wish us ill. Always.
 
“Dear families, the State of Israel’s existence is bound up with pain, your pain. You, all of you, you who march along this long journey of bereavement, you are our heroines and heroes. Today, as on every day, we bow our heads and say: thank you. From here, I offer a prayer for the peace and health of the injured, in body and spirit, from all of Israel’s wars.
 
“At the end of the Six-Day War, the journalist and author Didi Menosi wrote: ‘Whoever has felt pain but understood that pain is mute will not allow us to forget the departed.’ We remember. We do not forget. May the souls of the sons and daughters who gave their lives in painful wars be bound in the bond of life."