THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

efused to open their gates to the Jewish refugees, including neutral Switzerland,Britain, and even the United States of America, Canada, and Australia. We receivedthe emasculated, displaced survivors, but locked our hearts to them. We judged themharshly, too harshly. We maintained the ideological, mental and spiritual disconnectthat the Zionist pre-state Israel imposed on its Diaspora origins. We forced ourselvesnot to understand their experience and its context. We adopted the phrase that AbbaKovner, a leader in the Vilnius ghetto uprising, coined, “like lambs to slaughter,” todescribe the slaughter of one thousand years of Jewishdom in Europe. We foundfault in their passivity, which was no different from the historical passivity of Jewssince ancient times. Zionism became the active; Diasporic Jewry the passive. Weelevated our status at their expense. From the outset it is simple, but in fact it isdamaging—another mysterious complexity in the maze of Jewish history. Therefugees who came here were called “human dust.” Each one became a livingtestimony to early Zionism’s failure and its inherent contradictions. As we know, whenarguments are weak, the volume is raised. The dismal near past was now present,and the new Israeli future was tattooed in blue numbers on the arms of thenewcomers. The arrogant, boastful sons of the land could not withstand the Arabinvasion to ensure the security of the justproclaimed. We needed the human remnantsas cannon fodder, lest we too be ejected and displaced. The refugees, who camehere by no choice of their own and ours, became the cold water that washed theyoung smooth face of the newborn state.Both the graduate of the Shoah and the alumni of heroism logically concluded thatthe entire world was against them. This was another point in the historical mentalsequence of the Jewish people, who viewed themselves in a constant conflict with theworld, from our first instant to this very moment. Our language, Hebrew, is Ivrit, afterAbraham the Ivri. Ivri is derived from ever, meaning the other side. Abraham the Ivrimeans that he was born across the river, the Euphrates, and therefore belongs to theWestern Semitic family of tribes. This is what it says in the text, although it isinterpreted differently in the later Jewish studies. The Midrash explains, “RabbiYehuda says the whole world is one passage across and Abraham is one passageacross.” 12 It was so from ancient times on, that the world was on one side and theHebrews on another, and Hitler reiterated this existential point, which is now a wellseededpost-Shoah belief. One of the greatest hits by an Israeli band, Lahakat PikudDizengof, named after Tel Aviv’s most Parisian street, is called “The Entire World Is