Holocaust Remembrance Day

Since we're speaking of neo-fascism, let's not forget the original series. Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. The New York Times reports:

Sirens sounded across Israel on Monday morning, bringing life to a standstill as millions of Israelis observed a moment of silence to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

The two-minute siren at 10 a.m. is an annual tradition marking Israel's Holocaust remembrance day, which began Sunday evening and ends at sundown Monday. Pedestrians froze in their tracks, buses stopped on busy streets, and cars on major highways pulled over as the country paused to pay respect to the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.

On the drive home yesterday there was a brief discussion of Israel’s often grotesque treatment of the Palestinians, which was rightly denounced – Israel has overreached, cruelly and unjustly, over and over again. The Massada mentality of the Jewish state – with all of its apocalyptic rhetoric and attendant brutality – absolutely deserves to be criticized, but it’s useful to put that mentality in historical perspective. A Holocaust, preceded by centuries of European pogroms and alienation, lends itself to a siege mentality; again, that doesn’t justify Israeli atrocities but it certainly explains them. Phoebe said that she doesn’t consider the Israelis victims in the conflict. Neither do I – and considering that the main advantage of victimhood seems to be intermittent sympathy among western liberals, I have no trouble understanding why Israelis are ruthlessly refusing to be victims any longer.