THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

ebels and the disciples of the youth movements. From them it is a short distance tothe Palmah, the pre-state Israeli militia, and later on to the IDF Special Forces, theNahal Pioneering Combat Youth, and rest of the armed forces. The Shoah belongs tothe crooked Jews; heroism to the erect Zionists, and this is how we share themequally. In effect, the Zionist’s claim a disproportionate share of history and createdan Israeli version of Holocaust denial. We did not see, most likely did not want tosee, the other Jews, the masses, the overwhelming majority, who did not rebel andfight back. They were just ordinary people, like us, that the Germans and theircollaborators humiliated and drove to a terrifyingly wretched fate, piled in pits andstacked in mass graves. Those who survived did so in ways that defy the laws ofnature. We did not know how the other Jews lived, but glorified endlessly the fewwho took up arms. Our boast of relatively minor heroism silenced all the other voicesfor shame. This silence is like denial: that which is not spoken does not exist. Withoutwords we effectively erased the experience and sacrifice of the millions of Europe’sJews who are no more. We did not acknowledge them in their life and we became, ineffect, their deniers after their death.We have not yet been cured of this disease of denial. Indeed schools teach of thedays of darkness and fear, but these are lessons about life outside life. This isreminiscent of the current denial of Diaspora Jews. Who among us really knowsabout the Jews outside Israel, who are the majority of our people? What do weIsraelis know of the lives, dreams and fears of American Jews? What did we learnof the North African Jews who emigrated to France, or the Latin American Jews?Not a clue, and worse—we simply do not care. “They should either come and livehere,” the late President Ezer Weizman once told me angrily, “or they should go tohell.” This was the thinking when he grew up in the British Mandate PalestineLand ofIsrael, thus they were ignored during the Shoah, and this is still the sentiment today. Ifthey are well, they do not interest us at all; if their condition worsens, it only justifiesour choices.This is catastrophic Zionism at its worst: what is bad for the Jews is better forZionism. In this sense, I am not just a post-Zionist, but an anti, anti-catastrophistZionist. I believe wholeheartedly that if we do not establish modern Israeli identity onfoundations of optimism, faith in humans and full trust in the family of nations, wehave no chance of existing and surviving in the long run—not as a society in a state,not as a state in the world, and not as a nation in the future. The era of fearful