Today's entry comes from Ariel Rubinstein, where he enumerates twelve reasons why Israel should abolish Holocaust Remembrance Day.
It is a perfect example of how a brilliant person (Rubinstein is an expert on game theory and a winner of the Israel Prize on Economics) can also be very, very ignorant.
For example he starts off with "Holocaust Remembrance Day should be canceled, because the few who do have someone to remember will not forget those who died, and those who do not cannot truly remember."
In other words, national or institutional memory is meaningless. Why even teach history to begin with? Most of those things happened more than 50 years ago!
Rubiinstein seems to really hate religious Jews, and he wants to distance himself from those that were murdered by the Nazis as not being like him. He writes "anyone who genuinely wants to remember the destroyed Jewish study halls in Poland has no need to take part in the March of the Living at Auschwitz, they can see them in Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim."
Jews in Europe also had libraries and shops and doctor's offices. But anyone can find those things today as well! Why bother to remember them? In fact, they had lives, too - which can presumably also be replicated.
"Holocaust Remembrance Day should be canceled, because a large proportion of the victims of the Holocaust were ultra-Orthodox Jews, and their followers in Israel and abroad do not accept the day as a fitting date to mark the destruction. It would be better to adopt the tradition and to append the lamentation for the Holocaust to the Tenth of Tevet or the Tisha B’Av fast days, on which in accordance with Jewish tradition all of the bitter tragedies of our people are mourned."
But all the other events that Tisha B'Av and 17 Tammuz and 0 Tevet and Tzom Gedalyah happened before anyone today was born! Why remember them when no one alive remembers them?
His most offensive reason, though, is this one:
Holocaust Remembrance Day should be canceled, because it is an unnecessary opportunity for an unapologetic peek at the pornography of death. Anyone who feels compelled to look at pictures of executions or a final glimpse of victims before they die are invited to watch the colorful videos of Islamic State.What an obscene statement. ISIS wants people to view their videos for a specific reason: to cause fear and to gain recruits from sick people, today. Holocaust films are not meant to be titillating, If Rubinstein reacts to Holocaust films the same way he reacts to ISIS videos, then we have revealed exactly how sick he is.
It is no surprise that his last reason makes a comparison between Jews and Nazis, by saying "The danger of turning into beasts also looms over members of the chosen people."
What a disgusting man.
I wonder how game theory deals with players who are so filled with hate and spite that they cannot be considered rational.