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We started off the day with a tour of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial. The story of how the shoah came about shows us the dire consequences of ignorance, and reaffirms our commitment to fight for our values and advocate on behalf of our people.
From the Nuremberg laws to ghettoes to einzatsgroupen to death camps, the Nazis followed a policy of pushing the envelope, then pausing to see how the world would react before escalating the persecution further. As Jews were stripped of their rights, forced into ghettoes, taken into the woods and shot, and finally boarded onto cattle cars en route to death camps – each of these stages evoked little response from the international community.
Even the United States, home to so many Diaspora Jews, failed to meet its moral obligation for the Jewish people. As fighter jets flew past the death camps on their way to bombing more “strategic” targets, President Roosevelt was busy lying to the Jews that American planes couldn’t reach the death camps. Behind the scenes, it was expressed that bombing the death camps might push the Germans “from a policy of extermination to a policy of extrusion… which may embarrass the United States”. Far from proactively saving the Jews, the US was trying to keep the Germans from exporting them!
Where were our friends?
In secret, US Christians formed an “underground railroad” that would help get the Jews out of the US, in the event that the US started to track down and round up the Jewish people. While seemingly a ridiculous idea, this was an example of how Christians worldwide were distinguishing themselves from their Nazi counterparts. The Poles and Slavs, especially, had large numbers of righteous people who saved Jewish lives while risking their own, their family’s, and even their community. These righteous people weren’t always predictable: Oscar Shindler, well-known to all of us as the hero on Schindler’s List, was a gambler and womanizer before he entered the business of saving lives.
But while help did exist – as 2,000 trees planted at Yad Vashem honoring over 21,000 righteous individuals attests to – it was far from common. The combination of Nazi threats, ingrained anti-Semitism, and a simple ignorance of the sheer magnitude of the Nazi death machine resulted in a largely apathetic global community, right when Jews needed help most.
Fast forward 70 years later.
After Yad Vashem, we headed over to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs office in a sleepy Jerusalem suburb to hear former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dore Gold speak. Ambassador Gold expounded upon the three main threats that would face Israel in the coming 2011 year: the Palestinian Authority’s likely declaration of unilateral statehood and demand for a return to ’67 lines, Iran coming dangerously close to its nuclear threshold, and the impending assault by delegitimization campaigns across American college campuses in the event of military action by the IDF.
As college students, we are best prepared to help on our campuses. For the first time in its history, the justness of the Jewish cause is being called into question. Incidents such as Jenin, where Israel risked soldiers’ lives by fighting terrorists room-by-room rather than bombing buildings and risking the lives of enemy noncombatants, have somehow been warped into talking points for those seeking to delegitimize Israel. We heard about the infamous Goldstone Report, a UN document that accused the IDF of war crimes, simply for fighting an asymmetrical war against terrorists who hid behind innocent civilians. It is extremely important that we arm ourselves with the knowledge needed to counter these absurd claims and defend Israel.
Our day wrapped up with a tour of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament building. There, we heard Knesset member Aryeh Eldad. Eldad spoke of his proposal for an alternate solution to the Palestinian issue, in which they would receive Jordanian citizenship. It was interesting to hear another approach to the peace process, which so often gets stalled by the same issues. This really revealed the nature of the Israeli government, with a myriad of opinions and political parties vying for a chance to implement their policies.
After the disengagement of Gush Katif in Gaza, Hamas destroyed multi-million dollar greenhouses that were left behind as a gift to help improve the Palestinian quality of life. Then, they began firing missiles into Israel. As President Shimon Peres put it, “No matter what, we will never repeat the mistakes we made in the disengagement of Gush Katif”. A realistic lens is needed to avoid these disasters, but as Jews we must always look to a more hopeful horizon. Once crammed into cattle cars and systematically murdered, we now have the strength of the state of Israel to protect us. Optimism will pay off in the long term, as long as we don’t sacrifice our security.
