THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

war; we are not lambs for slaughter. This artificial, technological sign of respect thatwe give them is another certificate of shame that they receive against their will.Indeed they did not die as soldiers but as minorities, persecuted for being different.Does the military ceremony produce identification and empathy for the cause oftheir deaths? Not at all. The words of the former chief of staff, and the extravagantflyover, express nothing but our own ego, our sheer joy in force, the narcissism ofphysical heroism. They contain almost nothing that is sincere and compassionate thatwould connect us to the dead by way of identification, and that would recognize theirdisaster as our own. Our folly is best expressed in Air Force Magazine:The idea to execute a flyover above Auschwitz is the fulfillment of apersonal dream for Air Chief Brigadier General Amir Eshel. “This is afifteen-year old dream,” says Amir. “This is the most meaningfulexpression for the revival of this people. As an air force, we are themost tangible expression of strength for the people, and nobody canexpress this better than us . . . We tailored a plan, like the Air Forceplans a mission . . . The more you look at the mission’s details, themore you see how operationally complex it was. As in every militaryoperation, the first stage is definition of the target. There were twocentral questions that we dealt with,” Eshel explains. “One, how do weexecute this from a professional point of view? The second, whatnational and emotional elements do we want to emphasize? Where dowe want to pass? From which direction? How do we produce thebest picture? What text accompanies the event? And, of course, whowill be flying?” 4All we have left to do is to announce over the unit’s radio network: “We gotAuschwitz-Birkenau.”The founders of the state and many of their sons and daughters had a vital need toown this heroism because it creates the sense that pre-state Israel was fighting for itslife alongside the ghetto rebels. An artificial equation was formed, which forged anillusion that what had happened in Europe was half Shoah and half heroism. At thesame time, a tacit message was conveyed, according to which the Shoah halfbelonged to the Jews, the Diasporic Yids, the degenerative, rabbinical types.Opposite this was the heroism half, which belonged to the true Zionists, the ghetto