Holocaust references

Editorial

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently resorted to Nazi-associated terminology, referring to a potential Palestinian state that would seek to be "Judenrein, cleansed of Jews."

The prime minister was rightly pointing out the most racist aspect of the Palestinian national movement: that it seeks to create a state, as Netanyahu put it succinctly, utterly absent of Jews. (Not that any right-thinking Jew would seek to remain in a "free" Palestine, but it's the principle being discussed here.) So what the prime minister said was utterly within bounds. That outrage met Netanyahu's language is symptomatic of the distorted use of Holocaust nomenclature and imagery generally.

Discussion of the Holocaust and how it impacts on contemporary events is effectively off limits to Zionists. Our enemies have declared that the memory of the Shoah is too enormous to introduce into contemporary discourse, that the 20th-century Jewish tragedy is so momentous that it must be explicitly banned from the discussion of 21st-century Jewish concerns. And we have largely acceded. It is now almost impossible to suggest that the Holocaust experience should be considered in the context of contemporary events without a reaction so hurtful that Jews have learned to preserve the sanctified memories of the lost by avoiding discussion of this area of history and its lessons for today for fear that it will merely provide enemies with an opportunity to again spit on the ashes of our ancestors.

Ironically, critics of Israel – the very people who rail against any attempt to contextualize current events in the experiences of the Holocaust – themselves immorally and paradoxically invoke the nomenclature and imagery of the Holocaust against Israel. During the Gaza operation earlier this year, Holocaust language and Nazi imagery thrown at Israel reached new depths of evil and inhumanity.

Using Holocaust imagery against Israel is perforce despicable, demeans the dead millions, minimizes Nazism and deliberately distorts the contemporary reality. Does this mean nobody should use Holocaust nomenclature? Well, whenever anyone suggests that such horrific slurs cross a line of human decency, Israel's critics invariably rear up with the accusation that the Jews are trying to shut down criticism of Israel. The truth is exactly the opposite. Israel's critics are the ones who shut down discussion by contending that any counterargument to their egregious attacks is an unjustifiable response, as if offering a counterpoint in an argument is akin to banning the original point. Israel's detractors believe they should be free to hurl whatever they want and the only proper response from Zionists is to take it and shut up.

But the Holocaust is a part of this discussion. The state of Israel can ensure that endangered Jews will never again fall victim to the whims of countries whose immigration policies are controlled by those for whom Jewish lives are inconsequential. In the first half of the 20th century, at the moment when it mattered most, every country except the Dominican Republic turned their backs on Europe's Jews. And, while the Holocaust may have been the final motivation for decent people to recognize that Jews must control their own destiny, empathy with the Jewish people in the aftermath of the Holocaust, in the end, played almost no role in the actual creation of the Jewish state – a land to which Jews have ancient ties. And, when the moment came, Zionism was fulfilled by Jews and no one else, in a life-and-death battle at the moment of Israel's birth, without a helping hand from anyone but Diaspora Jews. Europe did not "give" the land to Israel, nor did the United Nations or anyone else.

The rose-spectacled observers who deny the Holocaust's relationship to current events frequently insist that a place of Jewish refuge is no longer necessary – as if that is Jews' only right to Israel. Palestinians deserve a Judenrein homeland, they contend, but pluralist, multicultural, democratic Israel need not remain a Jewish state. They need to refresh their historical memory of the second half of the 20th century. In the second half of the last century, life for Jews in the Muslim world was as untenable as life for Jews in Europe in the first half, and much further back than that. The difference after 1948 was that Israel existed as a place of refuge.

If anyone has the right to use Holocaust language, it is the Jewish people. And if ever there was an historical situation justifying it, it is the efforts of the Palestinian leaders to ensure that every last Jew in the West Bank is extradited as a precursor to Palestinian statehood. The controversy over Netanyahu's use of a Nazi-associated term should begin a reconsideration of who controls the memory of the Holocaust and its application to contemporary affairs.

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