Yesterday, January 27th, marked the day the United Nations General Assembly has set aside as International Holocaust Remembrance Day - the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
On this annual day of commemoration, every member state of the UN has been charged with honoring the victims of the Nazi era. Of course, more often than not, in a deliberate attempt to take advantage of the memorial and the Holocaust's single most effected people, the Jewish people, many across the globe have used this day to vilify Israel, as causing a new holocaust in the Middle East vis a vis the Palestinians.
Yesterday, the Sunday Times of London took this contempt and set it in stone by publishing a cartoon depicting a large-nosed Jew hunched over a wall, building it with the blood of Palestinians as they writhe in pain within it: stereotypical blood-libel Anti-Semitism intended deliberately to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance day.
A significant plurality of UN member states not only do not honor the victims of Hitler's ultimate evil, but continue to foment categorically that the Holocaust, at least the Jewish portion, either never occurred or has been blown significantly out of proportion by Jews to gain support for the creation and propitiation of the Jewish State of Israel.
Such is the world we live in. And it is the world we live in that suffers both by cause and effect as a result of the denigration of this Memorial. For holocausts continue as we see the true suffering of genocide, mass murder and repression throughout the world, with little or no response...we have certainly not seen any cynical cartoons vilifying the death dealer who has caused 40,000 Syrian men, women and children to breathe their last.
So, who is responsible for declaring the world as misguided because of its continual obsession with maligning the Jews? And let us not make the fruitless argument that it is not the Jews that are the victims of any calumniation, but the Israelis, who continue to repress the poor Palestinians - they are deserved of correction through any means possible. No, it was not an Israeli in yesterday's cartoon, but a large-nosed Jew...let us not mistake the intentionality of equating Israel with the Jewish people in all anti-Zionist propaganda...we are one and the same. It is not the Israeli that is depicted daily in the Arab press as the sons of pigs and apes, but the Jew.
Who shall stand up and say, "Enough!" - and refuse to allow the Jews to be effected by the scapegoating for the ills of the world? Whose responsibility is it to remind the world, indeed, to stand up to the world and proclaim that the right of the Jewish people to live in freedom AND security in their homeland is undeniable? Whose obligation is it to announce the truth that the reason there is no peace between Jew and Arab in the Middle East has nothing to do with the repression of an indigenous population...but is unequivocally a result of the ultimate aspiration of the majority of the Arab population to eliminate the Jews of the region - by any and all means possible?
It is, of course, the Holocaust survivors' responsibility first and foremost. Those who survived the "Final Solution" to obliterate the world's vermin Jews, they are the ones tasked with the burden to "Never Forget" more than anyone else...to remind all of what can happen when one's destiny is in another's hands. The Holocaust survivor cannot rely on others to take up their cause. Moreover, the Holocaust survivor cannot rely on others to sympathize with them...as alliances are fickle and can easily be manipulated by selfish or misguided means.
In fact, it is incumbent upon the Holocaust survivors to strengthen themselves with a fortitude that says not only "Never Forget" - but "Never Again"! And that even if the entire world attempts to deny the rights of the Jewish people their land, their freedom, their destiny and Israel and its Jewish people are friendless, alone and held in contempt by all, it is the Holocaust survivor who must not even blink when responding..."Not on my watch, not an inch, not even a millimeter of our freedom and destiny will we give back! Never again will we place in others' hands the ability to deny us protection."
My father Zvi would have been 89 had he still been alive...he was the only survivor of his entire family - all murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. My mother Ina, who still remembers clutching her sister, my aunt Vita, G-d rest her soul, while they watched the SS capture their father - my grandfather...gassed in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I've met hundreds, maybe thousands of others over the years who have survived and whose loved one's memories they never relinquished...whether they chose to talk about it or not.
The youngest survivors of the death camps are in their late 70's by now...most of the rest either no longer with us or old, frail and often have lost the fire of remembrance and some even the memories themselves. But, who are the survivors, really? As the generation that saw, that experienced the vilest form of human hatred and evil this world has yet seen...as they flitter like butterflies one by one to the Heavens to join those who went before them...who are the Holocaust survivors?
The answer: I am! My children are! All of Israel and, in fact, every Jew on the face of this Earth is! We are now the Holocaust survivors.
I have heard the argument, from Jews nonetheless, that we cannot live in the past. We must move on from the memory of the death camps and the slaughter and begin an era of engagement, of assimilation into our "New" world. My response is, Baruch HaShem. As soon as the "New" world demonstrates that it is ready to move on from scapegoating the Jews...as soon as the "New" world is ready to give up its obsession that the "Old" world had with the "Jewish Problem" - whether it be in the Middle East, Asia, Europe or the Americas - I'm ready.
Unfortunately, for the better part of 4000 years the world has demonstrated that it's not ready, or willing, to move on. It is not paranoia or delusion, it is simply historical fact. From the Amelikites and Philistines of ancient days, through the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, ancient Muslims to the present day, history has repeated itself. The Jews, for many reasons beyond the scope of this discourse, have been targeted for annihilation. Of course, we are not alone in this as I pointed out above...witness Darfur, Somalia, Bosnia, and now Syria. None of these unfortunate peoples have been targeted for centuries simply because they were born...Jews. The reasons have evolved, the regions have changed...but the facts remain the same.
More than one-third of the world's Jewish population was exterminated in the death camps of the 1930s and 40's. Had the Third Reich completed its task of conquering the world, not one Jew would have survived. And so, every Jew, whether of European descent or otherwise, is a survivor...a Holocaust survivor.
My uncle Zvi, G-d rest his soul, fought side by side with my father against Rommel in North Africa, lived with the memory of many of his family members...massacred in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He and my aunt Vita settled in Israel along with my parents in 1946. They helped build the nation, the Jewish nation of Israel, with their bare hands. But, they were not the only survivors of the Holocaust.
My cousin, Ruthi, and her brother, Villi, G-d rest his soul, their children and grandchildren, the four generations of our family to live in the Jewish Nation of Israel - THEY ARE THE SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST! My brother, Benny, G-d rest his soul, born in Israel, his two children and their children - THEY ARE THE SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST!
Unless we as Jews, no matter where we are from, understand that WE ALL are the survivors of the Holocaust...unless we ALL take up the gauntlet and say, "ENOUGH" to the agenda of much of the world to limit our destiny, what will the end result be? It is time to put political correctness aside. It is time to extract the notion that the Jewish people will be loved by the world if they and the Israelis can only make peace with the Palestinians. We must open our eyes to the reality around us.
The isolation Israel is facing today is not a result of the stubbornness of Netanyahu, the Israeli right, the "settlers" of Judea and Samaria or any other person or group of Jews. It is purely and simply the result of others attempting to usurp the right of Israel, the National Homeland of the Jewish people, to control their own destiny and security...end of story. No land for peace agreement, no two-state solution will ever alter that conclusion. We have been there, we have done that...
Yes, we must never stop praying for peace. Yes, we must follow the understanding that we have been given a divine responsibility, a mandate from Heaven, to stand up and to say to the world, "We are here for a purpose - we will do good, will we do right, we will be a light to the world, we will glorify our Maker with our actions and deeds."
Yes, we must align ourselves with those few in the world that are truly our friends, those who support us both ethereally and materially. But, in doing so, we must not twist ourselves into thinking we can place our trust in anyone but our Maker above and our unity and strength together. And, above all, we must understand that we, Jews throughout, are responsible for fulfilling our purpose as SURVIVORS. We owe that much to those that gave the ultimate sacrifice - to forever resolve...NEVER AGAIN.
So, I adjure you, all of those who call themselves Jews, all of those who support the Jews, all of those who pray earnestly for the Jews, to let go, not of the notion of doing good, but of thinking that doing what may be expedient and good by the world's standards will gain our acceptance and bring peace and safety. It will not. It is a fait accompli. And, we must, with it, also let go of the notion that we can surrender even one millimeter of land in Israel, or even support that notion. For, if we do, we place our people at risk and we void our responsibility - our commitment as Holocaust Survivors - to those who have gone before us.
