THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

prevention.” How targeted could it be when it is carried out dozens, if not hundreds,of times? How targeted could it be if innocent bystanders are also maimed andkilled? Targeted prevention sounds much better than “extermination,” “assassination,”or “liquidation.” Are we becoming more like them? Has the enmity between us andthe Palestinians already blurred the line between a good moral soldier and apredator? If I resemble them, the Palestinians, and they are the heirs of the Nazis,what does that then say about me? About us? We have no answer, as we have noproper words.For some the word “expose” may denote the courageous revealing of the truth,but round here, for others the same positive word means something else entirely, as itdoes for those who are crying over an old orchard that is gone forever since it was“exposed” for security reasons. The fence near the home of former defense ministerShaul Mofaz in Kokhav Yair was cleared and exposed. The orchard that existedthere before the arrogant Jewish community was built no longer yields fruit. Theterrorists no longer have a place to hide in ambush for the minister, so they try toharm elsewhere. The minister and his family can enjoy their sleep, except that by“exposing,” they planted another hidden seed of hatred.A “crown” in Israeli military lingo is not a royal accessory or a dental procedurebut a stifling siege that leads to hunger, thirst, and desperation. A crown is what isdone in my name when my children surround enemy cities and trap their Arab peersinside them. A crown is a terrible, dispiriting act to those who experience it—nomatter how benign the term may sound to those who do not want to know it, whobury their head in the sand that corrupts the holy language and turns it into a usefultool of the occupation.It is very difficult in Israel to compare something or someone to Germany becausehere, Germany means Nazis, gas chambers, and the final solution. It is inconvenient torecognize that Hitler’s Germany did not start with those images; it was not alwaysmurderous. Germany was different before, but it deteriorated. A word bred a phrasethat bred a reality that enabled destruction. Nothing compares—and I pray that it willnever compare—with Germany in the last stages of the Nazi regime, fromKristallnacht in late 1938 to the liberation of the victims from the death centers inGermany and the East in the first half of 1945. It is true that we do not have gaschambers here and that we have no official policy of deportation and annihilation. Yetthose who will not open their ears and eyes should not be surprised when it becomes