I’ve visited Yad Vashem quite a few times. It’s a place where I contemplate humanity, loss, resilience, and intolerance. With a deeper knowledge of Israel and Palestine than before, I decided to revisit the museum and ponder history, perhaps with new eyes. Questions swirled in my mind. How should memory be constructed? How do young minds absorb history? Is Yad Vashem curated and arranged in the best way possible for Israelis to stay vigilant but not paranoid?
What I’d heard, but not studied, was that Holocaust education tends to reinforce Israeli distrust of its enemies rather than encourage the humanistic lessons of the tragedy. I’ve thought of possible manifestations of such an approach. For instance, Israel has not yet recognized the Armenian genocide, in order not to rock the boat with Turkey—for the Arab world is supposedly too large and hostile. It also trades arms with Azerbaijan, which threatens impoverished Armenia with all-out war over disputed land. And what of Israeli responses to the genocides in Srebrenica and Rwanda?
Admittedly, I haven’t observed Holocaust education in-action in Israeli classrooms, on trips to Auschwitz, or on tours through Yad Vashem. Walking through the museum, however, I couldn’t help but receive the message of a huge machine of persecuting and killing Jews wherever they may be. I got no prominent information about the mass psychosis of the German people or the banality of evil among Nazi soldiers. I felt as if anti-Semitism was the one paramount force over so many other factors, such as the brokenness of the German people after WWI leading to their desire for a scapegoat. Where was there any real reflection of how human beings could have done all this? Does Yad Vashem treat anti-Semitism as a truer force than humanity’s flaws of apathy, fear, and narrow self-preservation?
Confirming my feelings about the exhibit, I found that Tom Segev writes the following in The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (page 464):
“The effort to rehabilitate the image of the Holocaust’s victims and survivors, to support the ideological struggle of the state, and to shape the memorial culture deterred Israeli historians from trying to understand Nazism. They feared, perhaps, that such an attempt would be interpreted as a justification of it or as a challenge to its abstract, almost mystic status as the symbol of absolute evil. This fear inhibited research and explains why the most important books on Nazism and the extermination of the Jews were not written in Israel.”
At the same time, where Yad Vashem has fallen short, there have been Israelis who have examined the Holocaust to glean more universal lessons:
If the Holocaust is telling us that genocide could happen to anyone in any place, then why shy away from the question of how Israel may eventually engage in unprecedented persecution or violence against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories? If human beings in ‘enlightened’ Germany could do what they did, then fearful Israelis could do something terrible on a smaller scale, right? Below, I contemplated some factors that can make future Gaza Wars worse. More Israelis can study the dynamics of mass intolerance and dehumanization that can potentially be unleashed against their Palestinian neighbors. With the proper finesse, and refraining from over-comparison, the universal lessons of the Holocaust can provide rich food for thought for such introspection.
- Knowledge that more tunnels are being built in Gaza to attack Israel, which may invite more Israelis to think the IDF needs to ‘finish the job’ during the next operation… a mechanical decision from thinking Israel has no other choice
- A large-scale attack of terror by Hamas-linked individuals inside the West Bank or Israel, in which children or an unprecedented number of individuals die… lighting the fuse to Israeli fears of another genocide
- The media becoming more saturated with images and footage of Gaza’s children being taught to hate
- The media showing more images and footage of Gaza’s refugee population demanding their right of return to what is now Israel… deepening the impression of a desire to extinguish Israel by their demographic weight
- Israeli Arab politicians and thought leaders making more statements that can be interpreted as delegitimization of Israel and Jewish self-determination in the Middle East… perhaps in conjunction with more Israeli Arabs turning out to vote their ethnic leaders into office… stoking Israeli Jewish fears of losing control over their Jewish state
There may be scenarios in which the IDF uses unprecedented firepower to deter men and boys in Gaza from picking up arms again. Such would probably coincide with Israel perceiving a loss of control—international isolation, boycott and sanctions, a lack of diplomatic solidarity when Israel suffers acts of terrorism.
I can’t aptly predict how Israel may be led to massive persecution or violence against Palestinians as have not been seen before. But then again, scholars still can’t fully grasp how the Holocaust happened even with the luxury of hindsight. If more Israelis don’t get more used to deconstructing the Holocaust and other historical conflagrations, then how can they be vigilant toward their own society? After all, when a ‘student’ must juggle so many pressures, she may fail a difficult test without properly studying and training her mind.
The Medford Pact 