THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

peoples’ holocausts. In a world in which Israel evades, and the Jewish people keepmum, all others can afford to be indifferent. Thus the fate of millions is determined.Our monopoly of a suffering keeps competitors outside the game.This is how a reporter for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot quoted a major Jewishleader in the United States: “A day commemorating the Armenians will lead to othermemorial days, to the Native Americans, Vietnamese, Irish, or any other people. Itwill damage the importance of Shoah Day.” Israeli veteran politician Shimon Peres,an artist in proving one thing and its opposite in one sentence, said on the eve of hisvisit to Turkey some time ago: “We reject attempts to equate the Shoah with theArmenian claims. Nothing like the Shoah had ever happened before. The Armenianssuffered a tragedy, not a genocide.” On the contrary, what is genocide is to bedecided by the people who suffered it, according to the definition in international law,not by the supervisors of world holocausts, not by the Jews. Genocide is a long wayfrom tragedy. The term tragedy belongs to the personal realm, for cases such as thesudden death of a close friend or the victims of a car crash. A disaster is anenhanced tragedy. A massacre is what Dr. Baruch Goldstein did in the Cave of thePatriarchs in the city of Hebron, where 29 Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosquewere murdered and another 150 were wounded. An act of terror is the mass killingof innocents in the Manhattan business district. A million and a half Armenians; amillion Rwandans—both are genocide. It is genocide by international law, and aholocaust for the survivors and their relatives. What France, Sweden, Belgium, andother nations duly recognized as genocide can be respected and duly recognized assuch by Israel as well. Furthermore, Israel ought to be the first to specify standardson issues of commemoration of other genocides.We must not regret the denial of the past. My question still stands: Are we presentdaydeniers? Have we learned our lesson? Israel and the Jewish people, byexpropriating and monopolizing the Shoah, deny all the other mass killings. It is adenial by means of miniaturizing, dwarfing, and disregarding. The result of this is aworld that is saturated with small and big holocausts. A world that does not seeRwandans and Cambodians, Darfuris, and Kurds is a world that is up to the taking;in the end they will come to take me, us, but it would be too late as I/we do not care.How should the alternative Shoah narrative sound?Israel must leave Auschwitz because Auschwitz is a mental prison. Life inside thecamp is survival laced with guilt and victimology; life outside the camp is of constant