THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

On January 27, 2004, Israel’s parliament held a special session on the Israeli struggleagainst anti-Semitism, obviously an important subject. The anti-Semitic hydra wasagain raising its heads in many places in the world. The time had come for a specialsession, attended by the prime minister and visitors filling the galleries to capacity.January 27 is a date that is marked by the West, and later the United Nations, tocommemorate the Holocaust, since it marks the day Auschwitz was liberated. Allspeakers but myself spoke again and again about anti-Semitism, Jew hatred and “theworld.” One speaker, Naomi Blumenthal, on the verge of tears, even warned of a“second Shoah.” Even the usually enlightened justice minister of the time, YosefLapid, compared (though shallowly) the horrors of the 1930s and the present time,exposing his innate local bias. He compared European Nazism with extreme Islamismand its suicide bombers. I was the last to speak, before the governmentrepresentative spoke the final word. I abandoned my prepared speech for the specialoccasion, and walked to the podium to argue, not orate.Mr. Chairman, Mr. Prime Minister, Honorable Knesset. I have somereservations on the deliberations and the tone of this session. I do notfeel so persecuted. I don’t think that the threat of a second Shoah isreal in any way . . .On the day the world made a historic decision, after so manyyears, to mark its solidarity against the injustices perpetrated in Europe. . . at the center of which was the injustice to the Jewish people. At atime when the entire world expresses its solidarity with us it is wrongthat from here, the Knesset, a message should emerge that we feel thatthe whole world is against us. Therefore this day should not mark anti-Semitism, but . . . should be a day in which the Knesset joins theworld in what the world is trying to do regarding the issues of hatredand xenophobia. . .The Western World, in which we have lived from the beginning ofthe twenty-first century, has many more protections for the hated, andespecially the hated Jew, than ever before. Strategically, as a nation,we are better off than ever before. Had we had the same friendshipswe have today sixty years ago, with the greatest superpower, with thethree major European powers—Germany, France, and Britain—not to