6th
of May, 2024
28th
Nissan 5784
Yom
HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel
A
few minutes ago, Zvi and I stood outside in the rain, the skies weeping with us
as the wail of the siren echoed our sadness, the siren whose wail brought
Israel to attention. Today is the Hebrew date, the 28th of Nissan, which
was chosen because it was the date of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the date we
fought back. I want to tell you
something, something that I was ashamed to think until 7 months ago, I believe
that “Never Again” is an empty phrase, an empty phrase that induced a false
sense of security because, it is now “Yet Again”
Not
only is the rise of anti-Semitism becoming a tsunami, Jews themselves are
blaming Israel for making trouble for them in their adopted countries, falling
into the trap of “keep quiet and it will be alright” not understanding that if Israel
doesn’t fight this enemy, then the fate of Jews all over the world is sealed.
Last
night I watched a televised conversation with Ofir Engel and his Safta, his
grandmother, or probably his great-grandmother. The topic of conversation was riveting
as Hannah, as a Holocaust Survivor, described her horror when she heard of the conditions
in which her beloved grandson was held by Hamas. The physical and emotional
torture, hiding in the darkness afraid to make a sound, believing that someone
would come to rescue him but unable to communicate with another soul, brought
back memories of her childhood, her lost childhood in the Shoah.
How
tragic that just two or three generations after the Shoah the ties that bind
them irrevocably are the shared experience of Jew hatred. I will not call the 7th
of October a Shoah, there is only one horrific and specific Shoah, but it shook
us Israelis to our very core to find ourselves vulnerable, but you, those of
you outside Israel, a whole generation of young people, your future leaders,
have become the modern day brownshirts.
Remember
the anthem of the Jewish people, the words of Naftali Herz Imber prophetic, The
Hope – Ha Tikvah. We must stand tall, we must remember our long, long history,
the people of the Bible right here on this land. Today, Hatikvah is so much
more than a hope, Israel is the reality, just as we read in the Passover story,
we came home; we are a strong democratic nation in a sea of despotic, tyrannical,
dictatorships, and we are prepared to fight for our right to be.
Today
we are independent, not dependent upon anyone, and if we have to, if the
tsunami of hate and lies, overtakes the West completely, we will survive alone.
We never want to be alone but our belief that good always overcomes evil was
apparently naïve.
First,
let’s listen to the children of the Jewish school in Munkacs in the Ukraine
during the 1930’s before anyone knew about the Shoah or the State of Israel,
who knows how many survived. https://youtu.be/viu48BxOBnA?si=GX8strqTngz4mgvR
Here
the beautiful young people, our children, who put their lives on the line to
protect us all, the IDF sing the song they know is theirs https://youtu.be/GQCu9kl68Tg?si=CbNp_upTMJc_ghNB
The
only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Sheila
No comments:
Post a Comment