You Know When People Say Jews Have Nothing To Do With Israel...

Well I'm a Jew. Happy Independence Day, Israel!

Yom Haatzmaut is celebrated not on the English calendar, but on the Jewish date of the establishment of the State of Israel, which is the 5th of Iyar.

Israel's Independence Day is not just celebrated by Israelis, but by Jews of all levels of observance all over the world.* Because we know that the reason we still exist today is because G-d gave us Israel - a sanctuary and a means of defending and protecting the Jewish people, even the ones who don't live in Israel.

It is fitting that the day before Yom Haatzmaut is Yom Hazikaron, remembrance day for our fallen soldiers and victims of terror - this year comemmorating 22,684 - which is followed by Independence Day as a reminder that their lives were not lost in vain.


*except for Neturei Karta lunatics, who erase Yom Haatzmaut from their Jewish calendar in the way that some people try to erase the Holocaust from memory - which is ironic because if Israel didn't exist there may very well have been another Jewish Holocaust. But they don't see that.