THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

Here for you is Israel in all its conflicting colors, paradoxical and contradictory. Israelmoves in panic between the pole of belligerence and the pole of real and imaginedfears that drive it to curl up like a battered child or a traumatized puppy. This is theIsrael that relied on the force of its founders, now bequeathed to their descendants,the sons of refugees, compensating for the power that they never had at the time. Allof us now try to live the past without using it to build a new present. Right now weare stuck between the incredible vitality that pushed us forward and our unwillingnessto return to the circumstances of the past. Since we possess both power andhelplessness, we move neither forward nor backward, not into Israeliness and notinto Jewishness. Torn asunder, we do nothing at all.For years Israel carried on reminding the world of the Shoah. Speeches andpolicies demanded the nations of the world to ensure that what happened would nothappen again. We meant that it must not happen to us: do not allow evil to raise itshead again, to persecute Jews again, but the world heard something else. It iscommon in life, and in interpersonal communication: it is not so important what I say,but what the other person hears. We cried, please save us from another Shoah, andthe world heard more: No Shoah, no Holocaust, no genocide must ever happenagain. This awareness slowly penetrated and became a world standard. Every evilperson is automatically tagged as a new Hitler for the rest of the world to fear andloathe. The world has internalized the lesson, perhaps not completely, butundoubtedly the awareness of persecution and war crimes is much higher today thatit used to be. It is by no small measure a result of our constant Shoah nagging.The International Court of Justice tried the former Serbian president SlobodanMilošević for war crimes. His country will not be admitted to the European Unionuntil it turns in the last of its war criminals. Likewise, the international communityembargoed and economically besieged racist South Africa, once Israel’s ally, andimposed cruel sanctions until its government, the last white colonial regime,surrendered. Many in the world, including a few Israelis, did much—and they couldhave done more—to stop the genocide in Rwanda. Colin Powell, former UnitedStates secretary of defense, personally intervened to stop the mass killings inSouthern Sudan.