Days of broken glass

Ran HaCohen has a new article that's well worth reading (as always):

In the weeks following Pesach the country indulges in a nationalistic orgy, hardly imaginable in any other modern state, reminiscent of a primitive tribe. ...

The ideological messages are built in: the alternative to Auschwitz is to live and die (and kill) for Israel. "They" wanted to kill us in Auschwitz just as "they" want to kill us in Israel; "they," the goyim (gentiles), hate us everywhere, and we are always innocent victims. Arabs and Nazis are all the same. It's not the occupation, not Israel's refusal to make peace, not even a particular political setting that can be rationally analyzed: it's eternal, unchanging anti-Semitism. It's live or let live. Doubting Israel's righteousness is like doubting the Holocaust. Criticizing Israel is supporting the Nazis.

Read the rest here.

My own experience of the "nationalistic orgy": when I was in the West Bank during Israel's 2002 invasion, the taxi driver had to take the highway through Israel to get from Jerusalem to Jenin, since it would have taken hours if we'd tried to go directly.  As we left Jerusalem and drove down the highway, the thing that  made an indelible impression—especially given the context of just having passed the site of the Deir Yassin massacre—was the procession of Israeli flags posted from utility poles on either side of the road, every few dozen yards, for several miles.  When we finally managed to drive and hike our way into the Jenin refugee camp, we saw Stars of David that the Israeli soldiers had spray-painted on doors throughout the camp.  As I walked through the rubble-strewn streets, feeling the smashed glass crunching beneath my boots and trying to absorb what I'd seen and was seeing, it was impossible not to think of the Night of Broken Glass—with all that implies.  The irony couldn't have been more extreme.

In case you're wondering, this excerpt from the article above explains why I wrote "the site of the Deir Yassin massacre" rather than just "Deir Yassin":

Today, in the most tasteless, despicable irony, the Israeli museum commemorating the European Jewish Holocaust, Yad Vashem, sits on top of a hill overlooking the graveyard of Deir Yassin, while the limestone buildings of the former Palestinian village are used for an Israeli mental institution.

I can't imagine a clearer illustration that in Israel "we will never forget" applies only to us, and not to the people whose lives we're destroying every day.

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