THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

the deaths, destructions, and atrocities that were forced on us, and which wecommemorated. Therefore our dead do not rest in peace. They are busy, present,always a part of our sad lives. Shoah and wars, death and eternity. Although we oftenwin the battles, we carry with us a sense of defeat. A victor should not feel this way.Because of the Shoah, Israel has become the voice of the dead, speaking in thename of those who are no longer, more than in the name of those who are still alive.As if it were not enough, war has become the rule rather than the exception. Our wayof life is combative, against friends and foes alike. One might say that the Israeli onlyunderstands force. This arrogant Israeli phrase, “Arabs understand force only,”originally alluded to the Arab inability to defeat us on the battlefield, and was used asan excuse for unjustifiable Israeli behavior. They only understand force, we said,patronizingly, as if we were educators. If “he who spares his rod hates his son” 1 thentreating the Arabs with force is an effective policy. Every state needs a reasonableforce at its disposal. Yet raw force is not enough, and a state also needs theconfidence to restrain it. Indeed, we have force, a lot of force, and only force. Wehave no alternative to force, no special notion or will to hold back our use of force,as in the popular slogan “Let the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] win.” In the end, wedid what the rest of the world’s bullies do: we turned an aberration into a doctrine,and we now understand only the language of force. It is true in relations betweenspouses and colleagues, and between the state and its citizens, and betweenpoliticians. A state that lives by the sword and worships its dead is bound to live in aconstant state of emergency, because everyone is a Nazi, everyone is an Arab,everyone hates us, the entire world is against us.Israeli belligerence and perception of force eventually leads to the question, towhom do the wars belong? This indeed is a major expansion of the Shoah narrative,yet it is essential to understand other aspects of Israeli life. Israeli novelist Eli Amir,with his sensitive, even provocative outlook on social matters, drew me into a newway of thinking. His novel Yasmin, a best seller in Israel, describes the impossibleand tragic love affair between an Iraqi-born Israeli Jew and a Christian Arab womanshortly after the war of 1967. It sadly, almost mournfully, addresses the opportunitiesthat the “Jews of Arabia” missed, to build a bridge between the New Israel and theold Middle East. There are many reasons these opportunities may have been missedand Amir’s tragedy is another legitimate entry in what I call the Israeli “traumacompetition.”