As it commemorates Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Israel is taking the opportunity to show concern for its past and present. Emad Gad writes As world leaders are busy celebrating the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II -- as the US president headed to the Baltic states and then to Moscow's Red Square with other world leaders to commemorate the occasion -- the state of Israel limited its celebration to commemorating Jewish victims of the war, particularly victims of the Holocaust. The same is true of the Israeli media, which limited its coverage of the Nazi era and the defeat of the Axis Powers to a commemoration of those Jews who fell in the war rather than a commemoration of the actual occasion: the defeat of the Nazis. This was a clear illustration of Israeli self-absorption and the tendency to extract certain events from their general context, which concern all of humanity. It is estimated that six million Jews died in the Holocaust, but the victims of the war waged by Nazi German number over 40 million. Although the Jewish commemoration has a place, this specificity should not be used to justify such self- absorption or the elision of all non-Jews from the picture. Moreover, it cannot be used to justify crimes on the pretext that what happened can never happen again, especially since the present victims had nothing to do with the Holocaust: the Palestinians had no hand in Nazi crimes, and the crimes did not occur in Palestine. As the Israeli media was busy this week commemorating the Holocaust, a few Israeli writers stressed the necessity of learning the lesson from it, which requires both expanding one's perspective and not using what happened as a justification for the state of Israel to commit further crimes. Among the most prominent of such writers was Ofer Shelah, who wrote "The Lesson of the Holocaust," published in Yediot Aharonot on 5 May. "A few decades ago, when more Holocaust survivors were still living among us, we thought that the remembrance of the greatest catastrophe to befall the Jewish people was in danger, particularly due to domestic attacks," Shelah wrote. "Diaspora Jews were disparaged with the phrase 'like sheep to the slaughter' for not having the courage and fighting power that the new Israeli had discovered in himself. The Holocaust commemoration intentionally focused on heroism and the Holocaust, which was taken to mean not the ability of the individual and the family to maintain their humanity in the worst circumstances, but those few examples of Jews who took up arms to defend themselves, an insignificant number compared to the six million victims. "Many years have passed since the Holocaust. Privately financed trips to the concentration camps now constitute a vital element in the academic development of Israeli youth. The trips -- without going into the more unsavory commercial aspects that have arisen around them -- leave a powerful impression. The official message about the lessons to be learned from such trips and the Holocaust in general has become extremely controversial. "He who cares to review his children's school curriculum will find something very interesting: there is a very great emphasis on the Holocaust. Students participate in ceremonies, read books on the subject and live it even more than those who had to live it in the days of 'sheep to the slaughter.' In contrast, there are fewer subjects on the history of Israeli independence. Today's students -- at least the ones I know -- learn more about the Holocaust than about the Yom Kippur War or the war in Lebanon. The picture is reversed: Israeli history has been shunted from the former position of prominence it enjoyed when Israel was still young, in favour of the Holocaust, which used to be an embarrassment. "It is doubtful that this is mere coincidence. Present-day Israel, a strong state both militarily and economically, is today seized with concern for its own victims. It continues to compare itself with an isolated island swimming in a sea of hatred, which includes not only the Arab and Islamic worlds, but most of Europe as well. This is what young Israelis learn on their trips to Poland; they learn not only about the terror 60 years ago, but the terror that exists around us now. "In his speech at the official commemoration ceremony in Yad Vashem, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon turned to stories of the heroes of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. After the liberation, Sharon said, two of them went to a Jewish officer in the Russian army and asked him where they should go. 'Don't go East or West,' the officer advised. 'They don't like you here or there.' It was no coincidence that Sharon chose two prominent symbols of old- style heroism, meaning two fighting, weapons- bearing Jews. Nor was it a coincidence that he chose the officer's quote, for this constitutes the essence of the lesson to be learned, one repeated by official Israeli spokesmen even today. "They like us nowhere. They're all anti- Semites. An explosion of anti-Semitism is just a matter of time and opportunity. So we can do anything. One who fights to defend his existence in a huge, completely hostile world is justified in anything he does. This is the message sent to the citizenry by Sharon, the leader of a nation that possesses an army whose might is compared to that of a superpower. "While Jews do need a national homeland, the power to defend themselves, and the remembrance, we are also no less in need of recognising that human evil knows no borders; it attacks regular people, like you and me. We need to realise that the commemoration involves not only remembering the injustices against us, but the need to fight against all injustice, wherever it may be." To read more about this issue, please visit the Web site of Arabs Against Discrimination (www.aad-online.org).
