TEL AVIV — Israel sounded a national siren at 8 p.m. on Monday to begin its annual Memorial Day commemoration, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leading the ceremony on April 20, 2026. This year's list of those being remembered includes the names of 25,644 soldiers and 5,313 civilians killed since 1860.

The commemoration, observed on the 4th of Iyar on the Hebrew calendar, honors soldiers killed since the establishment of the first Jewish settlements in Palestine in 1860 and those who died in Israel's wars with its neighbours and in conflicts involving Palestinians. During the day, traffic stops, silences are observed, wreaths are laid, places of entertainment are closed, and television programming is suspended and replaced by the names of Israelis killed since 1860. Details of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed since 1860 are not included in this year's Memorial Day list.

"From disintegrating Rafah to the high peak of Mount Hermon [Syria's Jabal al-Sheikh], our sons and daughters are not willing to accept what the monsters did when they attacked us," Netanyahu said during the ceremony. "They are determined to do justice with the perpetrators of the massacre and the horrors, and even in these very moments, they endanger themselves to create the conditions that will allow the return of all of our hostages and victory over our enemies."

In last year's Memorial Day commemoration, Netanyahu referenced the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack that killed 1,139 Israelis, but did not reference the more than 72,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel's two-year war on the enclave.

This year's joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day event was held online. Activists from right-wing groups in Israel have threatened joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremonies and attendees, and in the past, governments have attempted to ban Palestinians from attending such events.

"For Palestinians, this day is a tragedy. This is why we have a very different vision of it," said Hassan Jabareen, founder of Palestinian legal rights organisation Adalah. "For Israelis, it's a day of remembering their soldiers, but for Palestinians, Memorial Day and the day that follows it, Independence Day, just bring back memories of the Nakba." The Nakba in 1948 involved the displacement of around 750,000 Palestinians.

Allon Rivner, an 18-year-old Israeli, is part of a growing number of young Israelis refusing military service. "There's an expectation that the day should only be about the Israeli dead, so people don't like it when you try to talk about Palestinians," he said. "I think people just don't like the idea that these soldiers might have died for nothing. Look, my grandmother's brother was killed in the 1973 war, and I have no problem saying he died in vain. All of these deaths are in vain."