Over the past three months, the world has witnessed three moving tributes to the victims of the Holocaust: the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation, the United Nations Conference on the Holocaust, and finally last week's grand opening of the new museum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. To each event, a cadre of world leaders came to beat their chests and pay homage to millions of people the world killed simply because they were Jews.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, speaking at last week's Yad Vashem ceremony, reminded the world that Germany will forever bear the shame of perpetrating the Holocaust. But what he neglected to say, or perhaps could not say, is that Germany is not bearing that shame alone. It is a shame shared by all of Europe, by the United States, Canada, Britain, and a host of other countries who actively aided and abetted the Nazi extermination campaign, or who were passively complicit by not admitting Jewish refugees, by not bombing the railway lines or the death camps, or by not pursuing the war sooner or more decisively.
The leaders and representatives of these states are generally cognizant of their share in the blame for this monumental testament to human cruelty. Dozens of them came to Yad Vashem to pay their respects, to participate in the memorialization of the victims, and to show their nations' nascent friendship with the State built on the memories and morals of the Holocaust.
An article appeared in this weekend's Jerusalem Post Magazine questioning whether the attendance of leaders from such countries as France, England and other European states was more a declaration of friendship with Israel, or more a symbol with which to cover their states' future condemnation of Israeli security policies under the guise of friendship. I do not seek here to pass judgment on that question, but the fact that it can be raised at all is significant of the realization – at least in some quarters – that in addition to being the final catalyst for the establishment of the Jewish State, the Holocaust can be used to mask current anti-Semitism.
The deeper question surrounding these events is one that bodes ill for the future of Israeli peace-making efforts – for it is one that strikes at the very heart of Israel's formative national identity. Non-Israelis, among them even some Jews, cannot gain a true understanding of Israel's history, mythology, or identity, without a very deep understanding of the Holocaust. It is for this reason that foreign leaders and dignitaries, on their first visit to Israel, are taken as a matter of protocol to the halls of Yad Vashem to view pictorial and documentary evidence of the worst crime ever committed by humanity – a crime whose penance, while never fully payable, is represented by the State of Israel.
But while many world leaders came last week to pay their respects and offer a token of their newfound friendship, others were conspicuous by their absence. A lot of mention has been made recently of the possibility that Israel will be able to form or renew diplomatic relationships with as many as 13 Arab states now that Yasser Arafat is dead and a thaw is being experienced in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Egypt and Jordan already have peace treaties with Israel, and both states have returned their ambassadors to Israel as part of this new dawn of Arab d?tente with Israel. The Palestinian leadership too is making some renewed efforts to end the terrorism that has plagued Israel for the past four and a half years, and a new calm has more or less held in the region.
But not one single Arab leader or representative was present at Yad Vashem, or at the commemoration of Auschwitz's liberation. Not a single Arab leader or representative has paid any attention or bothered to do any investigation into the founding ethos of the State of Israel. Not a single Arab potentate has even tried to gain a real understanding of what makes Israel necessary – an essential ingredient in reaching any kind of accommodation that will mean the realization of Israel's long-standing yearning for peace.
The Palestinian voter in January elected Dr. Mahmoud Abbas as their new leader. Abbas has long been perceived as a moderate, a man who a decade ago was able to reach some modicum of understanding with Israeli representatives – however unofficial such activities were. But no attention at all has been paid to Abbas's own history – the fact that his doctoral thesis centered on denial that the Holocaust ever happened.
This is a vital element to consider, given the central role of the Arabs in the logistical ideological support for the Holocaust and its perpetration. The leader of Israel's Arabs in the 1930s and 1940s, Haj Amin al-Husseini, spent the twelve years of Hitler's rule living under his protection in Berlin, and serving as an advisor to the Fuhrer on anti-Semitism in the Arab world. The two worked hand in hand to prevent Europe's Jews from emigrating to Israel, and allied the Arabs of the Middle East to Germany in order to properly fight the British Middle Eastern forces.
A leader who cannot acknowledge the central role of the Holocaust in the Israeli identity, who has gone so far as to deny not only Arab complicity in the Holocaust but that it ever took place, is not someone who will understand Israel's needs sufficiently to make peace with us. That not one single Arab leader deigned to show an interest in the events at Yad Vashem or Auschwitz signifies that true peace based on complete understanding is still a distant chimera in the Middle East.
Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
