THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

we will not respond. We will sacrifice the six thousand three hundredJews to save the remaining thirty-five thousand.” In another instance hetestified: “We knew that the fate of the Bialystock Jews wasannihilation, to the last. We sacrificed the first thousand to lengthen thelives [not to save the lives, as this was impossible] of one tenth ofPoland’s Jewry for another month or two. Each day, in the currentsituation in the front and in the country, may bring salvation. We said‘no.’ We are responsible. Had we not, not a single Jew would haveremained here.” 11If I was a Palestinian today, I would put down my weapon and hug Israel in the onlyembrace from which it cannot free itself: the embrace of peace. If I were a youngJew in the Shoah, I would have probably been torn between the seductive handgrenade of Anilevich and my own inner conscience, and finally chosen MahatmaGandhi’s spiritual resources and tried to ferment nonviolent civil disobediencethroughout Europe. This is how I think and this is how I educate my children.This is not what I thought when I grew up and joined the IDF’s paratrooper brigade,proud of my officer rank, paratrooper wings, and the red beret. In those days I feltthat I was continuing the path of Anilevich, Abba Kovner, Antek Zuckerman, andHannah Czenes. Today I look back differently. If I had had to fight for my life—fallon my sword, throw a grenade, or draw a gun—I would not have wanted to be partof Israeli defiance. I would have rebelled as a European Jew, a child of the Diaspora,and then sought, in Alterman’s words, “to return and mix in the dark with the historyof the masses of the people of Israel”—to become a universal Jew, not an arrogantIsraeli separatist.Why was it wrong to accept the Jews of Europe? Why did we, the Israelis, refusethem as they were? They were ordinary Jews who were not born to become fightersor symbols, heroes or myths. They were simple people, grocers, small-timemerchants, leather workers, scholars, employees, parents, and children, talented andaverage. Nothing in their personal background and nothing in the collective Jewishhistory trained them to withstand Hitler’s mania and his collaborators’ obsessions.They were just like any other people under occupation. The countries of the world