THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

Almost everywhere the Shoah serves as a backdrop and metaphor, a winningargument, a lesson and a symbol for something that should never be repeated. It doesnot always succeed, but the Shoah of the European Jews always serves as a beaconwhose light reaches the darkness far away. It is the beacon of a lesson learned andan obligation. The world expects more from itself now, and therefore this is a nationalsuccess story of the highest degree. The Israeli expression “in their death theycommanded us life” is becoming a reality. It is unlikely that the world would have triedto embrace peace without first knowing how far human criminality can go, in this caseas far as Auschwitz and Birkenau, Treblinka and Dachau.Then why do Israelis feel bitter? Why do we think that the world is hypocriticaland does not understand us? It conducts itself according to the norms that wedemanded. Now that change is happening, we are still dissatisfied. The reason maybe that the world is redirecting, reflecting back to us our demand. And this isinconvenient. Just when we discovered power, and the joy of using it, just when wediscovered the sweet taste of revenge, the world becomes Jewish, repenting andrighteous. This is unfair. We want to be rowdy a little longer. We deserve it. Weearned it in the Shoah.Alain Finkielkraut, one of France’s most visible intellectuals, has been trying inrecent years to understand the hidden dimensions of antiSemitism and the “anti-”sentiment in general. Two of his recent articles on the subject were published in theIsraeli periodical Azure, an open-minded, right-leaning magazine that provides a bold,original voice to public debates. Finkielkraut writes:It is the Holocaust, then, that makes the territories occupied by Israelthe locus of crime; it is the trauma of the destruction of EuropeanJews that inexhaustibly fuels international sympathy for the suffering ofthe Palestinians. I would even say that for my correspondent to haveso readily dated the scandal of the “occupation” not from the Six DayWar, but from the creation of the Jewish state, the post-Hitler impulseto ignore all that came after Auschwitz must be deeply ingrainedindeed. [ . . . ] Indeed, it is on the strength of their disgust for colonial,collaborationist, and fascist Europe that they now defend those whomthey call “the victims of victims.” Their indictment of the Jewish stategoes hand in hand with their denunciation of Europe’s old demons. 5