The Holocaust's Boomerang Effect On Public Diplomacy

Honest Reporting/Backspin
28 December '10


I was never comfortable with the way Israel has over-emphasized the connection between the Holocaust and the founding of the state. Benny Levy's compelling commentary in YNet News strikes a chord with me:

When President Obama asserted in his Cairo speech that the aspirations for a Jewish homeland originated in our undeniably tragic history, many around here were insulted. “Why did he say that? After all, we’re not here because of the Holocaust.” Yet Obama is not at fault. After all, the Holocaust is the narrative presented by Israel itself to its guests (and to its own sons.)
. . . .

The custom of bringing Israel’s guests to Yad Vashem first carries a loud message. It creates the impression that the Holocaust is the reason and justification for the state’s existence; it places Israel on a podium of victimization, refugees, and the quest for a shelter.

However, Israel’s pillars were laid dozens of years before the Holocaust. Its cornerstone is the Zionist idea. Israel is first and foremost a national revival enterprise. Israel is first and foremost a national revival enterprise. Historian Barbara Tuchman once wrote that Israel is the only nation in the world “that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago."

Indeed, plenty of Western journalists assume that Jewish connections to the Holy Land began only date back to 1917, 1948, even 1967.

There are connections between the Holocaust and Israel's founding. But years of over-emphasis are having a boomerang effect on Israel's public diplomacy.

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