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Photo: Gil Yohanan
Annual Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem
Photo: Gil Yohanan
Ben-Dror Yemini

There is no alternative Holocaust

Op-ed: Memorial ceremonies which deny the national lesson because of the universal lesson, or vice versa, are not part of the memory of the Holocaust; they crush the lessons of the Holocaust.

Many Holocaust memorial ceremonies were held Wednesday evening. A large part of them included the word "alternative." What does that "alternative" mean? It mainly undermines the memory of the Holocaust, objects to delegations travelling to Auschwitz, calling it a "dictatorship of the memory," harshly argues that the lesson is national rather than universal, and the meticulous ones say – fascist rather than humane.

 

 

These "alternative" ones feel enlightened and advanced. The superior goal is well known: To undermine the national in the name of the universal, and the Zionist in the name of the humane.

 

There is nothing new here. British historian Arnold Toynbee called Israel a Nazi in the past for committing the Deir Yassin massacre. Germany historian Ernst Nolte claimed that what the Stalinists did was not much different from what the Nazis did, and that the claim about the "German's guilt" was no different from the Nazi claim about the "Jews' guilt."

 

Toynbee knew that massacres had been committed during every conflict or struggle for national liberation in the new era. That doesn’t make all nations Nazi. And Nolte should know that the "Jews' guilt" was a blood libel. The Germans' guilt, on the other hand, is a fact.

 

What happened could happen again, because there are those who are publicly preaching that what was done to the Jews then should also be done today (Photo: AFP)
What happened could happen again, because there are those who are publicly preaching that what was done to the Jews then should also be done today (Photo: AFP)

 

Toynbee and Nolte were the first drizzle. In the past few years, there has been a flood of distortions. Holding up an Arab woman for a half-hour security check at the airport, and a crying Palestinian child who was arrested after throwing stones, are both seen in Israel and in the world as "proof" that the Israelis are Nazis.

 

That's not criticism. That's not a universal drawing of conclusions. On the contrary, it's demonization – once against the Jews, today against Israel. It's not the banality of evil, as Johanna Arendt said about the Nazis. It's the banality of Nazification.

 

Israel was not founded because of the Holocaust. The movement for the establishment of a national home for the Jews was founded and established much earlier. National liberation movements developed in Europe as well, especially on the backdrop of the empires' collapse. I doubt that there is a national movement which did not commit any wrongs during the struggle,. The wrong did not cancel the right. Does Turkey not have a right to exist because of all the injustices, and even the Armenian genocide, which it committed while becoming a nation state?

 

National liberation has become a recognized right in the law of nations, and what was done to the Jews strengthened, rather than denied, their right to self-determination and a Jewish nation state. Do the Croatians and the Slovaks and the Czechs and the Armenians and many others have a right to self-determination and sovereignty and a nation state, as a recognized right in the law of nations, while only the Jews don't?

 

So the lesson for every human being is to remember and not to forget. Because what happened could happen again. Because there are those who are publicly preaching that what was done to the Jews then should also be done today. Remember that those days' demonization is returning to us as these days' demonization. Remember that that new, religious, fanatic ideology wants to not only annihilate foreigners and heretics, but also to established a dark global empire. Remember that the world chose blindness in the past, and there is no need to choose it again.

 

Remember and don’t forget that a national right does not deny the dignity of the stranger and the foreigner and the minority. Remember and don’t forget, that just like there were those in the past who denied the Jews' right to exist as human beings, there are those who deny their right to self-determination today.

 

Remember and don’t forget that the universal and Jewish and national and Zionist and humane lesson complement each other. And remember that memorial ceremonies which deny the national lesson because of the universal lesson, or deny the universal lesson because of the national lesson – are not part of the memory of the Holocaust. They crush the lessons of the Holocaust.

 


פרסום ראשון: 04.16.15, 23:39
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