On the eve of Memorial Day, I hung it at the usual place, on the gate for all to see: the blue and white flag. It is old, and no bank name is printed on its margins. This festive moment, which I especially cherish, is filled with more sadness each year, but also with feelings of belonging and gratitude.

There is almost no need to explain the sadness and sorrow. Like all of those from my generation, I leafed through the pages of Parchments of Fire - the literary works by soldiers who fell in the War of Independence - before I knew how to read. In 1956, I helped the grown-ups blacken the windows. In 1967, I tasted a sense of foolish, adventurous excitement and grieved for the first time over an admired counselor. And since then, war after war, I lost my best friends and felt the pain of other friends who lost their children. I fly the flag in their honor, because I do not have the right to turn my back on their lives and their deaths.

I also fly the flag in honor of my grandfather, who chiseled quarry stones in Jerusalem, and in memory of my grandmother, who left her beloved Europe because she believed the ground was burning there and that Jews should be in their own home. And I fly it in honor of my father, who fought in the Old City, and my mother, who was injured while waiting in line for water during the siege, and my aunts and uncles, who paved roads and worked the lands of the valley and were members of movements for peace and equality. I cannot disparage the enthusiastic and sincere intentions of their hearts.

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I do not only fly the flag in honor of the past, but also in honor of the present: in honor of the great wonder of a home for the Jewish people, which has become for our children a place like any other place in the world; and that is good. And in honor of the miracle of the rebirth of Hebrew, and in honor of the future of those children, who chose to live here despite the difficulties and dangers. I cannot be contemptuous of their choice.

It's not easy. All the governments of Israel, particularly during the 40 years since the Six-Day War, and the current government more than any, carry heavy guilt on their shoulders: the guilt of the occupation, the violated promise to do everything for the sake of peace, discrimination against Israel's Arab citizens and the abandonment of the weak, and the corruption and hedonism.

During these years, the blue and white flag, with the modest Jewish star in its center, has served as a belligerent instrument in the hands of those who received a license from the government to exclusively and one-dimensionally represent nationalism. Mutely, the flag was raised by those who overturn peddlers' stalls in Arab cities, shove soldiers and policemen, and curse the state. Abashedly, it was photographed as a backdrop of stateliness for cynical officials who make fateful decisions. And helplessly, it descended on the coffin in the grave at the end of a superfluous war.

But a normal people is not supposed to let those with power and authority snatch their symbols from them. The Greeks who opposed the government in their country did not stop waving their flag with love, even during the blackest days of the dictatorship that tyrannized them. The French fighters for justice did not fold away the flag of the republic even when Algerian captives were being tortured and murdered in its name. None of these people turned their back on their country and its symbols. They did everything to bring down the government that abused them.

Only Israelis allow themselves to be angry with their symbols and toy with the idea of emigrating every time the "state" is not to their liking. The left is insulted by the right's opportunistic grabs. The settlers are hurting from the disengagement. The veteran Israelis look down on the newcomers, and the newcomers cannot stand the "old elites." Those who do not threaten to emigrate at least declare that they will not fly a flag, and they foster an elegant internal exile: until what they want comes to pass, they will have no part in the "state."

As ever more Israelis threaten to refrain from raising the flag, its importance grows stronger in my eyes and becomes endeared to me anew. In light of its exploiters, its sworn enemies and its former lovers who long for what it once was and will never be again, I feel doubly committed to the past, present and future, to the not-so-obvious right to be a people in its own land. And to the simple flag, the blue and white. Therefore, I was happy on this Independence Day that my old flag fluttered and announced to all, including me, that it belongs to me just as I belong to it.