I’d just about finished a rough draft of what I had to say about the stormy events that transpired in Bet Shemesh over Chanukah — and now the whole situation has changed. The scandalous demonstration that took place in Yerushalayim last motzaei Shabbos hit me like a blow. There was, perhaps, some justification for holding a demonstration in response to the shameful secularist demonstration that was held in Bet Shemesh. But the use of yellow Star of David patches was an unforgivable crime. And to heighten
But just because the secularists presented a distorted reality and lost all sense of proportion does that mean we have to as well? That demonstration was an act of Holocaust denial. It was a display of gross insensitivity to the reality of that dark chapter in our history like spitting in the face (yes here we are back to spitting again!) of those who through the mercy of Hashem survived that Gehinnom. The marchers in Yerushalayim were claiming in essence that their experience here in the State of Israel is like that of the Jews in Europe during the Holocaust.
Well I hereby inform you: Auschwitz wasn’t anything like a day camp. The Warsaw Ghetto wasn’t a vacation resort. If those demonstrators had spent one single day in the Lodz Ghetto if they had been in Auschwitz Treblinkla or Majdanek for one hour they would never dare to draw such a shocking comparison. Let’s imagine them demonstrating like that in front of armed SS men. After a few lessons in real time about Nazis yellow stars and concentration camps they wouldn’t be so quick to come out in the streets of Yerushalayim looking like Auschwitz escapees.
These people may feel wronged by the trendy incitement against chareidim currently taking place on streetcorners and in the pages and screens of the media but this too was caused to a large extent by the tiny violent minority among us (yes it’s time we got it through our heads that this is a small minority that the chareidim themselves also fear and thanks to them many places in Israel don’t want chareidim moving into their neighborhoods).
In Beit Shemesh they saw to it that an isolated incident would turn into a national conflagration. But no symbols from that terrible period in our history please. The Israeli policeman even if he hits and uses force is not a Nazi. And despite all the wrongs of this secular regime we’re not in a ghetto in those horror-filled days in Europe. Ask those who survived and then maybe just maybe you’ll understand.
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