THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

mention other states, the Jewish world would have looked different.We have this friendship unconditionally. The Catholic Church, whichused to accuse the Jews for crucifying Jesus, is now a different church. . . No danger of genocide exists today, certainly not of exterminatingthe Jewish people . . . True, there is active anti-Semitism, but today’santi-Semitism is not just the Jew’s problem. Today’s anti-Semitism,when it exists in a certain society, is the litmus test for the moral qualityof that society . . . Why? Because it is no longer the legitimate legalhatred of the pariahs leprous Jew, but an indicator of the humanquality of life of the community in which such things happen. A hatefulsociety, whether anti-Semitic or otherwise, is a flawed society.Therefore, against the picture of hatreds of the world, includinganti-Semitism and Judeophobia, the State of Israel, the Knesset, mustask itself: what should I be doing?...The Knesset and the State ofIsrael should extend their hand to the world and say: let us form aunited front in the world’s struggle against xenophobia, against hatredwherever it is, against hatred against humans, including the Jewishhuman.We must not remain in our own shell. We must not repeatedly saythat other hatred does not interest us and that we don’t care whathappens to others; that only the hatred against us is true hatred, and allothers are not real. If we are fighting the struggle against world hatred,we shall take what price we paid as victims, and convert it intorevenue, as a lesson to the world: we should not be treated this way;no one should be treated this way. When the State of Israel comeswith clean hands and Israeli society stands beside those who love andreject hate in the world, we will have to tell ourselves: charity begins athome. Here, too, there is work to be done on the subject of hatred ofman.It is a custom in the Knesset to greet speakers as they walk down from the podium,but this time it did not happen. From the podium I saw people looking at me, somelistening, some enraged. The body language at the visitors’ balconies, where Shoahsurvivors and professional Shoah wheelers and dealers sat, was uneasy. I knew I wasstrumming on raw nerves yet I could not but speak those words. I had decided that I