Universalising the Holocaust
By Gilad Atzmon
Israel is upset! Ynet reports today that Dublin Mayor Mícheál Éamonn Mac Donncha addressed a Palestinian Authority international conference in Ramallah on Wednesday, despite the Israeli Interior Minister instructing authorities to stop him from entering the country.
Mac Donncha boasted at the conference that his city's council adopted a resolution calling for the expulsion of Israel's ambassador to Ireland. Such a move didn’t make Mac Donncha popular in the Jewish State.
The symposium titled ‘Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the State of Palestine’ focuses on Jerusalem's significance in the eyes of Palestinians in the light of American president Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
"Jerusalem is of paramount importance in the world. I think an attempt by any one state or religion to exclusively reign supreme over Jerusalem is wrong. The American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital is therefore very wrong," Mac Donncha said expressing a universal ethical position.
Palestinians are not used to seeing Western politicians taking their side. Such an ethical move never goes unpunished as Jeremy Corbyn and thousands of his party's members can tell.
Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Occupied Territories Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai questioned yesterday whether “the honourable Mícheál Mac Donncha chose the event and its timing intentionally or not." Today Israel marks the Holocaust Remembrance Day. "Perhaps tomorrow's siren will remind him that (Mufti) Amin al-Husseini met with the mass murderer Adolf Hitler, and then he'll try to come up with things to tell his city's Jewish community." I want to believe that Maj.-Gen. Mordechai doesn’t expect Dublin’s mayor to compromise on basic ethics just to appease Dublin’s Jews. Needless to mention that it may also be possible that some of the 1500 Jews who live in Dublin may actually support the Mayor’s humanist approach.
Maybe Maj.-Gen. Mordechai should use the occasion and contemplate himself over the meaning of Holocaust day. He can, for instance, delve into the racist Israeli Law of Return. He can ask himself how is it possible that just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz the newly formed Jewish State ethnically cleansed Palestine of its indigenous population (The Nakba). Maj.-Gen. Mordechai should ask himself if it is a coincidence that on the week that commemorates the holocaust, IDF soldiers filmed themselves ‘having fun’ shooting Palestinian protestors as if they were sitting ducks.
I do believe that time is ripe for the Jewish State to tell us what is the universal moral lesson it drew from the Holocaust.
If they want to burn it, you want to read it!
Being in Time - A Post Political Manifesto,
Amazon.co.uk , Amazon.com and here (gilad.co.uk).