February 7 marked seven years since Ori Ansbacher was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist near Jerusalem. At the time, her death shook the country; today, her name is rarely spoken.
Ori was not a soldier. She was not armed. She was a young woman doing Sherut Leumi (National Service), sitting alone in a forest she loved. She was writing, thinking, and breathing. And there, in a place that brought her peace, she was attacked and killed.
The brutality of her murder is impossible to forget. What is harder to understand is how quietly she has faded from public memory. How does someone like Ori, a young, giving, entirely innocent person, disappear from our collective consciousness? And why?
Remembering losses in Israel
Ori’s story is not an exception. As Israel endured the war, and an ever-growing list of victims, earlier names began to slip away. Some victims became symbols, etched permanently into public awareness. Others, no less meaningful, no less innocent, slowly disappear.
But remembrance is not a zero-sum game. Honoring those murdered in recent months does not require forgetting those who came before them.
Israel’s moral strength has always come from its ability to remember across generations of trauma; to carry many names, many stories, many losses at once. When memory becomes selective, that strength begins to erode.
Increasingly, the way Israeli society remembers victims of terror depends less on meaning and more on timing. During wartime, attention narrows, the focus shifts forward. And those who were murdered just years earlier, whose lives shaped communities, values, and futures, are quietly pushed aside.
Some communities understand this instinctively.
In Gush Etzion, memory does not live only in official ceremonies or on a single date each year. It appears in banners, at lookout points, in names spoken aloud. It is woven into daily life. This kind of remembrance is not about politics or symbolism – it is about responsibility. It sends a clear message: no life lost to terror is replaceable, and no name is disposable.
Remembering Ori Ansbacher
Ori Ansbacher deserves that kind of memory. She deserves more than an annual mention or a passing reference. She was not a headline. She was a young woman of service, creativity, and depth, someone who chose to give of herself to others and was murdered simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her story is not less relevant because years have passed. If anything, it is more instructive now.
For the thousands of young men and women currently serving in Sherut Leumi, this question is not theoretical.
They continue to give their time, their energy, and their hearts to Israeli society, often quietly, often without recognition. When the memory of someone like Ori fades, it sends an unspoken message: that service can be forgotten, that sacrifice can become invisible, and that only certain deaths are remembered in the long run.
That is not the Israel we claim to be.
A society at war must fight on many fronts. One of them is the fight against forgetting. Memory is not passive – it requires intention. It demands effort, from communities, institutions, educators, and the media. Choosing to remember is an expression of national character.
Public memory does not fade by accident. It is shaped by what we teach in schools, what we mark in public spaces, and which names leaders and institutions choose to repeat year after year. When victims of terror disappear from public discourse, it is not because their stories lack meaning. It is because remembrance has become reactive instead of principled.
Israel cannot afford to remember only when headlines demand it or anniversaries briefly resurface and then vanish. A nation built on shared responsibility must also commit to shared memory, including the responsibility to speak the names of those murdered long after the cameras have moved on.
Remembering is not about dwelling in the past. It is about setting a moral standard for the future, about teaching the next generation whose lives mattered, and why.
Ori Ansbacher should not be remembered because seven years have passed since her murder: She should be remembered because she lived, because she served, and because her life mattered – then, now, and always.
That is the memory her family wants. That is the memory her friends carry. And that is the memory Israel needs.
The writer is a Wisconsin-based journalist and advocate for B’not Sherut. Having completed her own Sherut Leumi in Jerusalem, she continues to support and represent young women serving their country through national service.