Israel Matzav

The Holocaust as a liability

Jonathan Tobin rips Haaretz for an editorial that essentially argues that Israel must forget about the Holocaust and accept an Iranian nuclear weapon and a 'Palestinian' reichlet (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

Haaretz, which articulates the opinion of the minority of Israelis who espouse the views of the hard left about the conflict with the Palestinians as well as the potential confrontation with Iran, has come to negatively view any attempt to ground the country’s security policies in the historical experience of the Jewish people. Thus, for them it’s not merely enough to chide the prime minister for what they wrongly believe is the promiscuous use of Holocaust analogies. Instead, their goal, as well as that of others who pay lip service to the idea of proper commemoration of the Six Million who died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, is to strand the event in history. Doing so serves their immediate political purpose but, in fact, confounds the entire concept of remembrance of the Holocaust.

This is a familiar theme from the left, which in recent years has come to view mentions of the Holocaust as a dodge that has allowed Israel to avoid coming to grips with the tough issues of war and peace as well as its social cohesion. But it’s not Netanyahu and others who are in the wrong; it is those who wish to isolate the destruction of European Jewry in history and to avoid drawing conclusions from it who are profoundly misguided.

Though the Holocaust has universal significance, its particular meaning relates to what happens when Jews are rendered powerless in the face of powerful foes bent on their destruction. While there are those who wish to discuss it only in the most general terms about bias, the Holocaust was a specific event that happened to a people who had been demonized for 2,000 years and lacked the ability to adequately defend themselves.

Netanyahu is not injecting a political agenda into commemoration of this tragedy. It is actually those who wish to ban mentions of Iran’s nuclear program, the genocidal intent of Hamas and other Islamist terrorists as well as the rising tide of European anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism from the discussion of the Shoah who are distorting the debate.

Indeed. When Israel's Left tries to suspend history, they also suspend the reality of the visceral hatred for this country, and for the Jewish people, espoused by Iran, the 'Palestinians' and most of the Arab Muslim world. It is only by suspending reality that they can maintain the delusion that peace is possible in the foreseeable future.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Holocaust, Iranian nuclear threat, Israel's Hebrew Palestinian daily, Israeli Left

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:45 AM