Israel’s President Warns Against Using The Holocaust To Justify Israel
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin spoke against using the Holocaust as the only lens through which to understand Jewish history, warning that such an approach could damage Israel’s relations with the world community.
“We need to ask ourselves: Whether, when we are involved only in preventing a Shoah, are we capable of most effectively meeting the various challenges that face us?” he said in a speech on Sunday ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day. “The Shoah is permanently branded in our flesh. Each of us has a number on our arm. Nevertheless, the Shoah is not the lens through which we should examine our past and our future.”
Rivlin said he disagreed with other Israeli leaders who invoked the Holocaust in modern warfare, such as former Prime Minister Menachem Begin who framed Israeli military ventures in Lebanon in 1982 in terms of preventing another Holocaust.
Rivlin said that the challenge of the Jewish people is to both remember the Holocaust as a unique event that specifically targeted Jews and at the same time to not let it justify modern-day decisions.
Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected] or on Twitter @naomizeveloff
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30