Otzma Yehudit are not Nazis, so stop invoking the Holocaust
Opinion: Racism is not necessarily the precursor to Nazism. The racial segregation laws in southern US states were still in effect after Nazi Germany fell, and the result was a black president. So let's not rush to assume racist ideologies will lead to another genocide, and let's stop comparing Israel's far-right to Hitler's supporters.
In an unusual move for a journalist, I publicly said two and a half weeks ago that I would not vote for a party that includes Otzma Yehudit. My position on the matter has not changed.
Despite that, I've decided not to join the campaign against the merger on the right.
There are two reasons for this decision: primarily, politics is not a youth movement. Political leaders make very complex decisions under conditions of great uncertainty. I didn't at the time, nor do I now, have the tools to judge the political ramifications of avoiding such a merger.
The second reason is that I will not sign up for a campaign (which began last week and is still ongoing) in which Otzma Yehudit members are depicted as the Israeli version of the Nazis. Yes, their ideology is harmful and destructive, but this campaign, which is meant to link their ideology to Nazism, is simply wrong.
To understand this campaign, one must go back in history. A significant portion of the prominent Jewish intellectuals in the first third of the 20th century were active in Germany, and were an integral part of German culture. They admired that culture, and some even saw it as the epitome of human creation.
And then came the Holocaust, turning their world upside down. The nation that was a symbol of progress and enlightenment became the most horrendous killing machine in human history, and targeted them and their families. As a result, those Jewish intellectuals had to find an acceptable explanation to resolve this cognitive dissonance.
The solution some of these intellectuals formulated was to assume that any nation, at any point in time, might in a matter of a few years deteriorate to the point at which Germany found itself during the Third Reich. Therefore, a logical human being will constantly examine his surroundings, searching for signs that would indicate such a process was beginning.
Even if this conclusion is the correct one, the process of looking for warning signs should make sense. One of the common signs of budding Nazism is racism. Racial segregation laws, for example, are considered a harbinger of a process that ends in gas chambers.
But historical experience does not support the supposition that racism is necessarily a precursor to Nazism. American society in the first half of the 20th century was just as racist as Nazi Germany. The racial segregation laws in southern US states were still in effect, discriminating against black people even after Nazi Germany fell. Despite that, the end result was a black president and no gas chambers. Why? Because even though racism is wrong and terrible, it is probably not a good prophesier of a future holocaust.
Rabbi Benny Lau's comments, as well as the comments made by other Israeli intellectuals, are afflicted by a tendency to take any display of racism and jump straight to the Nuremberg Laws and Nazism. First and foremost, that's not true. And beyond that, in the Israeli reality, it's also useless. It's true that Rabbi Benny Lau is second generation to well-known Holocaust survivors; but my parents are also second generation to Holocaust survivors—albeit not well-known—as are millions of other Israelis. Each survivor and each second generation has lessons they took from the Holocaust. No one person's conclusions are more relevant than those of another.
There are many people whose personal conclusions from the Holocaust are the complete opposite of Rabbi Benny Lau. So this knee-jerk reaction of enlisting the Holocaust in political arguments is not helpful. It only creates unnecessary instrumentalization of the Holocaust, which undermines the uniting factor of remembrance. Therefore, using the memory of the Holocaust in this argument is not only wrong and ineffective, it also hurts us all.
