Sixty years after the conclusion of WWII, the UN decided to
make January 27th, the date of the Red Army’s entrance into
Auschwitz, the official date of the International Holocaust Memorial Day
commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. The UN issued a decision
encouraging member states to develop curricula to teach the younger generations
the lessons of the Holocaust in order to prevent such crimes in the future, to
preclude any attempt to deny the Holocaust, and to denounce all instances of
religious intolerance, racism and violence against ethnic or religious groups.
Here in Israel, we focus on anti-Semitism, so Naftali Bennett, who is both Minister
of Education and Minister of the Diaspora, presented The Anti-Semitism Report in
this week's cabinet meeting. According to the daily paper “Yisrael Hayom,"
this Report indicates that more than 40% of EU citizens hold anti-Semitic views
and agree with the statement that Israel behaves as did the Nazis or that
Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians. But
anti-Semitism is not limited to Europe, it raises its head in America as well:
75 percent of Jewish students on campuses in the United States have experienced
or witnessed anti-Semitism. Minister Bennett concluded, "Anti-Semitism is
quietly gaining a stronghold in academia and under the roofs of organizations allegedly
dealing with human rights, and from there it intensifies its propagation of incitement
and hatred."
Here we have the whole of the narrative – as seen by the
Prime Minister and his chief ministers – that explains what has been happening
around us here in Israel during recent months: The world is anti-Semitic.
Everyone hates us and everyone is against us. That’s the way it is in Europe,
that’s the way it is in America, that’s the way it is in the Da’esh-ridden
Middle East, and that’s the way it is among Arab Israelis as well, those
citizens who are not loyal to our state. Since that’s how it is, the Prime
Minister recently affirmed that we are forever fated to “live by the sword”,
and the Ministers of Education and Justice and the right-wing organizations
with whom they have close ties explained that human rights organizations in
Israel are traitors who must be exposed and prosecuted. Minister Yariv Levin added
that they should be outlawed, just as we outlawed the northern branch of the
Islamic movement, contrary to the recommendations of the Shin Bet and although
there were no charges of terrorism against them. Meanwhile, the Education
Minister continues to reject books and works of art that may interfere with the
teaching of the “correct” narrative, and the Minister of Culture adds that she
will make sure there will be no budget for anyone who does not adopt this narrative.
I have a feeling that in our minds today we are not
commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 71 years after the defeat
of the Nazi enemy. In our minds we are still as much victims of the world’s
anti-Semitism and hatred today as back then. We are still in the bunker at 18
Mila Street with Anielewicz and his besieged fighters, and all around us is only
evil and catastrophe. Since this is the situation, according to the government we
must use International Holocaust Remembrance Day to instill the lesson, to
foster the politics of fear and strengthen the de-legitimization of the "traitors"
/ "the infiltrators" / "the leftists".
In July 1948 my father was ten, a Holocaust refugee and
orphaned of his father, a survivor of the camps of horror in Transnistria. The
Zionist movement and the State of Israel saved him and gave him freedom and a
new future. But today we have reversed our roles: we, the State of Israel, are
ourselves destroying the Zionism that enabled the Jewish people to establish a
national state, without which the Jews would have no future. Today the world
does not hate Jews; it is angry with Israel. What we are seeing and
experiencing is not anti-Semitism, it is anti-Israel. The narrative we have
developed leads us to maintain policies of oppression and discrimination
against Palestinians in the occupied territories and of inequality for the Palestinian-Arab
citizens of Israel. This is what the world sees and is no longer prepared to
accept. This is why we are being attacked, and not because we are Jews. The
State of Israel was created by the Zionist movement to provide existential
security for the Jewish people, a physical refuge and a spiritual and cultural
home. Today it is the state that we have established here to ensure the safety
of the Jews that is now the source of insecurity felt by Jews worldwide. With
our own hands, we are destroying the very essence of Zionism.
The lesson I would want to teach on International Holocaust
Day is precisely the one decided upon by the United Nations 11 years ago: to
act against any discrimination, lack of religious tolerance, racism and
violence against groups based on ethnicity and religion. This is the lesson that
will ensure there will never be another Holocaust. Neither for us nor for any
other nation in the world. This is the lesson that will help us to build a
state that will serve as a source of pride and security for the Jewish people
throughout the world, and also for all non-Jewish citizens of Israel, those Palestinian
citizens of Israel with whom we are meant to live together.
Yaniv Sagee,
Givat Haviva
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