A memorial ceremony was held in Majdal Shams, in the North, on Monday evening to commemorate the 12 victims of the rocket fired at the village from Lebanon on July 27, 2024.
During the ceremony, a memorial was dedicated to those killed on that day two years ago.
In addition to the 12 boys and girls aged 10 to 16, who were killed, 34 others were wounded as a result of the strike.
A nearby stone wall that collapsed under the force of the blast likely saved the lives of others sheltering behind it.
Thousands attended the funeral procession, and the impact site has become a place of pilgrimage for visitors wishing to express solidarity with the bereaved families and the Druze community.
Impact site dedicated to remembrance and life
Majdal Shams Mayor Dolan Abu Saleh initiated the creation of a memorial park in honor of those killed.
Surrounding the impact site, the park was designed to combine remembrance with life. It includes a soccer field and an amphitheater where commemorative events can be held. The remaining challenge was to design the memorial at the exact point where the rocket struck.
The memorial was designed by architect Zvika Pasternak, who recently created the Ktav VaShem installation at Kibbutz Kfar Aza and the Bibas Footprints installation at Tze’elim, both in communities near the Gaza border. He develops his memorial projects in close consultation with the local communities and the bereaved families and for their benefit.
Working together with the bereaved families and the Majdal Shams community, Pasternak created a memorial that is restrained yet deeply moving, suggestive and thought-provoking.
“When I accepted the task of designing the environmental installation, I knew that the impact crater where the rocket struck would occupy only a small area, while a much larger memorial park planned by others would surround it,” he said.
“As I began working, I established the principles that would guide me: to preserve the crater and, through it, convey in a restrained, clear, and empathetic way the moment of impact and its force. Ultimately, all that remained after the malicious rocket, which cut short the lives of children at the very beginning of their lives, was a small hole in the ground.”
The crater was designed to be the focal point of the park, with all the park’s paths converging at the impact site, meaning “anyone walking along them has no choice but to acknowledge the crater’s existence, even though it does not rise above ground level.”
“That is the installation’s central concept. If all roads lead to the crater, and every element of the park faces it, then visitors who wish to look into it and see what it contains will be compelled to lower their heads slightly,” he said.
Even in Pasternak’s earliest sketches, the impact crater was emphasized through a large metal depression, created to match the dimensions of the original crater. Around it would appear the names and ages of the children killed.
“When I visited the site with the construction team, and we discussed the shape of the depression, I didn’t realize that standing beside me was Jibara Ibrahim’s bereaved father. Our original plan had been to remove the remains of the wall, which seemed unrelated to the memorial. Then I heard him cry out in pain: ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do, but you’re not moving this wall. It’s the only thing left from the strike,’” Pasternak said.
“It was a difficult moment to witness but an instructive one. After the tour, we met with the families’ committee at the council offices. All of us together, the council officials, the bereaved families, the construction team, and myself understood that preserving the remains of the wall and incorporating them into the memorial was essential.”
He explained that new design alternatives were then prepared that incorporated both the crater and the surviving wall. In the version ultimately selected, the surviving wall forms one side of a rectangle surrounding the crater, while the other three sides are built from concrete slabs engraved with the names of the children.
Crater filled, names engraved in Hebrew, Arabic, English
At the center of the rectangle stands the metal depression replicating the crater left by the rocket.
“The remains of the wall, which we had originally intended to remove, became the architectural element around which the entire installation was designed, just as it is written: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’”
Pasternak said that from his first drafts, he knew the installation would not rise above ground, and that visitors wouldn’t realize they were at the point of the impact until it was right in front of them.
“To reinforce the moment of impact and the disaster it caused – and unlike the remains of the wall – I chose to create the depression from rusted steel, a reminder of the material from which the rocket itself was made. The head of the council chose to build the depression from small pieces of metal welded together, giving it a surface composed of many different geometric forms,” he said.
Once the shape of the crater and the families’ preferred spelling of the victims’ names had been approved, work began. At a metal workshop in Aniam, an artists’ village in the Golan Heights, dozens of triangular steel plates were cut and welded together to create the three-dimensional form of the depression.
After the head of the council visited the workshop, examined the work, and approved the final design, the completed structure was loaded onto a trailer and transported to the impact site in Majdal Shams.
Around the new “crater,” measuring 1.65 meters in diameter, a concrete platform was poured. Surrounding it are 12 concrete slabs, each engraved in Hebrew, Arabic, and English with the first name and age of one of the murdered children.
Even before the memorial park and installation were officially inaugurated, many visitors had already come to the site. Pasternak said it was moving to see how, as with any work of art, each person brought their own interpretation.
“The head of the council saw the pieces of metal as a symbol of fracture, but in their welding together he saw healing and repair.
“Jibara’s father saw in the metal fragments the shards of the rocket scattered by the explosion.
“Milar’s mother saw in the crater the hole that had opened in her heart.
“And tour guide Eran Shavit said the rusted depression reminded him of the Druze proverb about the copper tray, ‘Sidr hahas’ – every touch upon the tray resonates throughout its entire length and breadth – an image of how this tragedy became a shared mourning for both the Druze community and the people of Israel.”