THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

I never made secret of my opinion that the commemorative, forced trips for Israelisto the death camps in Poland are ill-conceived and dangerous. Since the experienceis emotionally overwhelming, we are cultivating a subconscious mental reality, inwhich all past horrors are reconstructed, cloned, only to be renewed and perpetuatedby future generations. It is like collective reincarnation. Instead of breaking the cycleof pathology, we perpetuate it. Instead of healing, we re-infect ourselves. Instead offorgetting, we scratch our wounds and bleed again. Israeli national separatists find inthe heaps of ash—which once were smiling, creative people—fertilized ground fortortured souls.Therefore, in my awakening Israel, the days of the annual summer break will bededicated to a much more meaningful journey. Instead of a one-way trip to a timeand place of pain, humiliation, and ruin, I wish to propose a multidimensional journeyto hope and trust. Groups of Israeli students, Jewish and Arabic, will visit Spain:Aragon, Castile, and Andalucía. There they will become familiar with the golden age,when Islam and Judaism had mutually beneficial relationships. Each one of them willsee and understand that there was time of spiritual alternatives to military service,suicide bombing, and terror. From Spain they will travel to Germany and EasternEurope, will study the European Jewish millennium, of which only the last dozenyears were that horrible.They will visit immigrant Muslim concentrations in the heart of Europe, where anew European Islam is attempting to exist. From there they will return home to Israeland tour the confrontational history of Jews and Arabs. In the end, they will sit downto draw their own conclusions of the historic tour. I hope and believe that theunequivocal conclusion of many of the children will be that violence, racism, andextermination are not an alternative. Extermination has no building value and it lacksimagination and creativity. They will understand by themselves that only culturalcooperation, with the acceptance of the other as an equal to be appreciated, willyield for us an optimistic future and a second golden age for the benefit and the gloryof the entire world.Israel’s education system should arrange another trip for its students: visiting andstaying with Jewish communities in the West, and especially in the United States.There we can learn what it means to live a life free of threats. We can learn aboutsolidarity, and how life with national meaning can be lived without an external enemy,and with full trust between Jews and the non-Jewish environment.