Israel Was Created to Ensure the Survival of the Jewish People
Critics refer to some of the newly ascendant parties in the Israeli government as "hypernationalist and Jewish supremacist." If by these epithets they mean that their members and supporters care more for Jews - their national family - than they do for the enemies of the Jews; that they are hell-bent on putting a stop to the weekly slaughter of innocent Jewish civilians by Arab terrorists; and that they believe that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish People, and oppose the erection of a jihadist Palestinian polity controlled by Hamas, then this is just classical Zionism. Ben-Gurion would affix his signature to these propositions.Dani Dayan: Our Duty to the Dead: Remember Their Names
We, whose children and grandchildren will, God willing, grow up here in Israel, want peace more than anybody. We believe, as has many an Israeli strategist hailing from both sides of the political-ideological divide, that peace will come only if we are strong, and only if we are insistent on our rights to this land. In addition, we have noted that when Yair Lapid was at the helm, he came up with no better or more humane ideas for dealing with the conflict than any of his predecessors.
The State of Israel was created, and continues to exist, for one purpose: to ensure the survival and prosperity of the Jewish People. Unless we keep present in our minds our polity's Jewish nationalist raison d'etre, and keep at bay those universalist, Western-based notions that are geared by definition to undermine nationalism in all its forms, this country is done for.
"Remember only that I was innocent and that, like all of you, mortals of this day... I too had a face marked by rage, by pity and by joy, an ordinary human face!"Dear Non-Jews, this is what to do this Holocaust Remembrance day
Benjamin Fondane, a French Jew, wrote these poignant words in one of his final poems, Préface en Prose, before being murdered, shortly after his deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. Fondane's plea for remembrance was frequently voiced by Jewish people persecuted by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II; an appeal for a solemn and everlasting commitment by all humanity to recall, in essence, every Holocaust victim. Fondane insisted that we never forget their humanity, their individuality.
Indeed, no two persons are identical. We each possess our own distinctive features, personality and traits, as well as the name given to us at birth. That name marks each of us as an individual, whose story—past and future—is forever unique.
Our names define us. Even when we leave this world, our names, and our stories, remain—for generations.
Remembering the Murdered
During the Shoah, the German Nazis and their collaborators sought not only to annihilate the entire Jewish people through an unprecedented and systematic campaign of mass murder. They also aimed to eradicate any trace of their culture and religion, of their very existence, down to the very last Jew. Even before arriving at the concentration and death camps, the Jews were marked as mere numbers by the Nazis and their collaborators. Once they had reduced the Jews to nameless masses, the perpetrators could more easily erase them.
By our understanding how the names and identities of the Holocaust victims were brutally stolen from them, we can better appreciate how important it is to remember them. Like Fondane, the final hope of many of the victims, aware that they were on the verge of death, was to be remembered. Thus, refusing to fade into oblivion, they demonstrated their undying human spirit. It is our duty to ensure the eternal fulfillment of that hope.
‘Antisemitism – the hatred of difference – is an assault not on Jews only but on the human condition, as such,” said Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z”l (of blessed memory).
Most Israelis and Americans mark the end of what we commemorate on Yom Hashoah as 1945, yet the incidents of ugly antisemitism continue around the globe. Here in Boca Raton, Florida, messages of antisemitic hate were distributed on January 15, 2023, terrorizing Jewish residents and causing their non-Jewish neighbors to question the state of the world. A day later, a swastika was projected onto a building, nearby in West Palm Beach, Florida.
In the midst of this trend, January 27 – the day we commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day – could not be more critically important to recognize.
Even as some people continue to trivialize Yom Hashoah, marking when nearly one-third of the Jewish population perished, others deny its very existence. Public awareness and acknowledgment – or lack thereof – are trending dangerously. Antisemitism is at its highest levels since World War II, with attacks on Jewish centers and synagogues, and acts of assault, harassment, and violence on the upswing globally. This troubling wake-up call means that the current climate needs to change.
Even as we face dwindling numbers of aging survivors, the Shoah remains a contemporary issue. It is a critical time for the lessons of Yom Hashoah, which require the confrontation of a number of emotionally and intellectually difficult questions. In a world where prejudices are still being manipulated and amplified, going largely unchallenged, discrimination must not be allowed to flourish. We cannot allow a people’s very existence to be threatened ever again.
George Santayana said, “He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.” Winston Churchill used similar language as part of a speech in the British Parliament in 1948, the year Israel was formally established by the Israeli Declaration of Independence, an irony not lost on us.