We rubbed our eyes and wondered whether we were reading correctly when we saw a small JTA release that opened: “Holocaust education will begin in Israel as early as the first grade, the country’s educator minister said.”
This is another kind of murder — murder of childhood. This is lack of self-confidence taken to the extreme. What is the education minister afraid of — that if children are not inundated by facts of the Holocaust by first grade, they will never learn?
There is no way to sugar-coat, to deflect, to soften, to introduce-by-stages — pick your metaphor — the Holocaust. What is the education minister thinking? That teachers will speak to first graders in vagaries (Jews were “taken away” or “denied food”)? Even if it were possible to isolate some less horrible facts about the Holocaust from the truth, what good would that accomplish?
It should not need to be said that six-year-olds do not need to know about mass murder, about poison gas chambers, about killing pits, about children watching their parents shot and parents watching their children shot.
Was it necessary to show six-year-olds pictures of the planes crashing into the buildings on 9/11? No doubt, many children saw this, but not all — and what did they lose? Did they not learn about 9/11 when there were older? Is there a single person in the US who was a child in 2001 who does know about 9/11?
And in Israel — with tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors still living, with the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, with Holocaust Memorial Day (a public holiday), with talk about Iran and its genocidal intentions, does the education minister think that a single Jewish Israeli will grow up not knowing about the Holocaust?
If ever there were a misguided educational idea, it is Education Minister’s Shai Piron’s plan to move the beginning of Holocaust education down from 11th grade to first grade.
According to the JTA, Yad Vashem has put together the plan with the education minister. Here, no doubt, is some kind of Guiness world record for institutional self-absorption.
It is already the case that the Holocaust is the most written about event in history; that more than 50,000 personal testimonies about the Holocaust have been filmed; that Holocaust memorials have proliferated (in fact, historians of architecture believe that the Holocaust has bequeathed the first real Jewish architecture); that concentration camps have been preserved — all this is to the good, and all this means that Israeli kids, if not introduced formally to the Holocaust until they are, say, Bar and Bat Mitzvah age, will miss nothing of importance about the Holocaust.
The idea of Holocaust remembrance is to remember it and not to repeat it. The idea is not to give children nightmares.
People from TV personalities to Mr. or Ms. Joe Average have their Top 10 lists of best movies, best jokes, best songs, best cities to live in, best places to visit, best places to retire, best beaches, best restaurants . . . and the list goes on. But the Top 10 haters? The ADL has compiled for us just such a list: The Top 10 Active Anti-Israel Groups in the US.
The list contains some of the usual suspects, such as “Muslim Public Affairs Council” and “American Muslims for Palestine.” The tweak in the beak is this: The list also contains two Jewish groups: the Neturei Karta, mostly based in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim neighborhood (and most of whose residents resent the Iran-loving, Palestinian-terrorist loving members of this odd Orthodox group); and Jewish Voice for Peace, which is sort of a throwback to the old American Council for Judaism, which tries to convince the world that it is more Jewish for being anti-Israel.
One might be tempted to say that the ADL is bending over backward trying to be fair — naming Jewish groups when, in fact, it is certain Muslim and other groups that spew the most hate against Israel — but, the truth is, anyone who is familiar with the two Jews groups on the ADL list know that they qualify.
It is one thing to view the world not through Israel-centered lenses, to believe, for example, that it is not good for Jews to concentrate all of their population in one place; or to disagree fundamentally with Israeli policies. But it is something else entirely to act and speak in a way that seeks to harm Israel. That’s what Neturei Karta and Jewish Voice for Peace do, and that’s why the ADL legitimately placed them on its “Top 10” list.
The point of such a list, of course, not just to tell us who’s who in the anti-Israel club, but to remind us of the need for eternal vigilance when it comes to Israel’s safety in particular and to the Jewish people’s safety in general.
Especially in an age when it is easier than ever to disseminate hatred — check: Internet; check: 500 TV channels — it is important to be reminded that there are people “out there” who support anti-Israel terrorist groups, who compare Israelis leaders to Nazis’ (check: Gaza is the “new Auschwitz”), who call for the end of Israel — and who do not supply facts to verify their arguments.
It is good to be reminded that ignorant or malicious people can do an infinity of damage. Check: Hamas missiles. Check: Hezbollah missles. Check: Iranian nuclear centrifuges. Check: Gunships that literally are loose canons under the control of Syria’s leadership.
When people organize in order to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel — such as the sponsors of the false advertisements on RTD buses — yes, it is good for us to be reminded. Yes, it is important.
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
