THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

themselves to speak words that should not be spoken in respectable places.Extremism moves from the fringes of xenophobic nationalism to the more moderateright and from there on to the cultural and political mainstream. The circles ofinfluence almost always parallel those of indifference.At first extremists are viewed with disdain, as they are just a “tiny minority,”“lunatics,” etc. But disdain, unfortunately, does not stop them. The people at thecenter are too indifferent and self-indulgent to pay too much attention, and theybecome accustomed to the sights and sounds of extremism. Once the noises from theright are part of the public agenda, then it becomes impossible to uproot them.In the 1920s and 1930s members of the German Right demanded prosecution ofthe “November Criminals,” as they called the leaders of the democratic parties whohad signed the armistice agreements in 1918 that ended the Great War and thus, intheir eyes, betrayed Germany. In Israel, both the extreme right that loiters in the hillsof the West Bank and the bourgeois right in suits and ties demand the prosecution ofthe “Oslo Criminals.” This is what they call the Israeli leaders, the late Prime MinisterRabin and President Shimon Peres, who signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, and mostmembers of Israeli society who supported them, bringing an end to the first Intifada.This must be understood as a call to bring the whole democratic process to trial. Isthe similarity between Germany and Israel incidental? Are the writings on the wall,“Arabs Out” and “Transfer Now,” different in any way from Juden Raus [Jews out]?The speeches in the Knesset, filled with hate, fear, and obscenities that are strickenfrom the minutes, though not from the consciousness, what do they tell us? When aradio newsreader says “an Arab has found death,” what does it mean? That he lostdeath and IDF soldiers helped him find it? What does it mean, “soldiers fired in theair and two boys were killed”? That Palestinian children fly in the air like MarcChagall creatures, and are hit by our innocent bullets? The dozens of cases ofunidentified, unaccounted-for killings, to whom do they belong? They belong to us, toyou and me.Words can grant life and words can exterminate, and words always reflect reality.“Death and life are in the tongue,” is an old Hebrew saying, and a bitter Israeli truth.If we listen to the substance of words in our lives and not just to their melody, wemust conclude that we are much closer to the language of death than to the languageof life.So wrote a wise woman, Hannah Arendt, on the Eichmann trial for the New