Visibly moved by the honor, Lucy Aharish, an Arab-Israeli news anchor, was the first of fourteen Israelis to light a ceremonial torch to mark the beginning of Israeli Independence Day celebrations, The Times of Israel reported today.

Aharish was teary-eyed when she said she was lighting the torch “for all human beings wherever they may be who have not lost hope for peace, and for the children, full of innocence who live on this Earth.

“For those we were but are no more, who fell victim to baseless hatred by those who have forgotten that we were all born in the image of one God. For Sephardim and Ashkenazim, religious and secular, Arabs and Jews, sons of this motherland that reminds us that we have no other place, for us as Israel, for the honor of mankind and for the glory of the State of Israel,” she said.

Aharish, the only Arab lighting a torch in the ceremony, also spoke in Arabic. She said: “For our honor as human beings, this is our country and there is no other.”

The Times added that during Operation Protective Edge last summer, Aharish accused Hamas of “using civilians as human shields” during an on-air discussion with an official of the terror group.

A video of Aharish lighting the torch is embedded below.

Among the other Israelis honored in the torch-lighting ceremony were Ehud Shabtai, the developer of the navigation app Waze; Danny Gold, who oversaw the creation of the Iron Dome project; Alice Miller, who pave the legal path for female pilots in the Israeli Air Force; Marta Weinstock-Rosin, a developer of a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease; Gal Lusky, the founder of Flying Aid; and Dan Korkowsky, a soldier from an elite intelligence unit made up of soldiers on the autism spectrum.

[Photo: i24news FR / YouTube ]