Yom Ha Shoah
April 27 and 28 (Nisan 26 and 27) is the Day of the SHOA and the Heroism of the Jews of Europe and North Africa, established in memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and their henchmen during World War II.
Christian (and post-Christian) civilisation memorialises Jews who died in the gas chambers and were shot in mass graves, unresisting and unprotesting, and whose sole salvation lay in the Gentile armies which defeated the Nazis – epitomised by the Red Army which rolled into Auschwitz on 27 January 1945.
The deaths of those Jews – the “good” Jews, even the “perfect” Jews – “will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice”, and thereby expiate the sins of humanity.
Just as a Jew, crucified by the Romans as a Jew, was taken over by Christianity for universal salvation, so too the Holocaust directed primarily against the Jews has been hijacked by Christian (and post-Christian) civilisation as a universal “warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice”.
And this applies, mutatis mutandis, to the Jewish state – the only state in the world which is expected to risk its citizens’ lives, even its very existence, for the sake of peace. Israel is expected to play the rôle of the perfect Jew: to go calmly and unresistingly to its own death, and thus to appease its enemies – to die in order to expiate the sins of mankind.
Because the Jew who refuses to submit, and who instead fights his oppressors, who dares to win, the Jew who brings salvation and independence to Israel by defeating overwhelmingly superior armies whose sworn war-aim was to exterminate Israel and all the Jews therein, is the very devil.
And thus Christian (and post-Christian) civilisation can memorialise the Holocaust while casting the Jewish State as the devil incarnate, an evil that has to be exterminated.
And Jewish communities and the Jewish State memorialise the Holocaust while recognising it as a prelude to life.
Yom Ha Shoah
April 27 and 28 (Nisan 26 and 27) is the Day of the SHOA and the Heroism of the Jews of Europe and North Africa, established in memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and their henchmen during World War II.
Christian (and post-Christian) civilisation memorialises Jews who died in the gas chambers and were shot in mass graves, unresisting and unprotesting, and whose sole salvation lay in the Gentile armies which defeated the Nazis – epitomised by the Red Army which rolled into Auschwitz on 27 January 1945.
The deaths of those Jews – the “good” Jews, even the “perfect” Jews – “will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice”, and thereby expiate the sins of humanity.
Just as a Jew, crucified by the Romans as a Jew, was taken over by Christianity for universal salvation, so too the Holocaust directed primarily against the Jews has been hijacked by Christian (and post-Christian) civilisation as a universal “warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice”.
And this applies, mutatis mutandis, to the Jewish state – the only state in the world which is expected to risk its citizens’ lives, even its very existence, for the sake of peace. Israel is expected to play the rôle of the perfect Jew: to go calmly and unresistingly to its own death, and thus to appease its enemies – to die in order to expiate the sins of mankind.
Because the Jew who refuses to submit, and who instead fights his oppressors, who dares to win, the Jew who brings salvation and independence to Israel by defeating overwhelmingly superior armies whose sworn war-aim was to exterminate Israel and all the Jews therein, is the very devil.
And thus Christian (and post-Christian) civilisation can memorialise the Holocaust while casting the Jewish State as the devil incarnate, an evil that has to be exterminated.
And Jewish communities and the Jewish State memorialise the Holocaust while recognising it as a prelude to life.