Comforting the Afflicted

"In this place I have said many times that we must identify an existential threat in time and act against it in time and tonight I ask 'why in the years before the Holocaust did most of the world's leaders not see the danger ahead of time?' In hindsight, all the signs were there. Has the world learned a lesson for the mistakes of the past? Today we are again faced with clear facts and before a real danger. Iran calls for our destruction. It develops nuclear weapons."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial

Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial ceremony

It was the Nazi regime of Germany under Adolf Hitler which was responsible for the extermination of a third of the Jews in the world. Had they, of course, been successful in their pursuit for world domination, their dedication to wiping out all Jews from existence anywhere on the globe would have been pursued with the diligence and dedication that German ingenuity and determination brought to bear on the issue, to reach total success.

Of course the German Nazis were not alone in their zeal to accomplish eradication of Europe's Jews. They had the assistance of like-minded Jew-haters from within the countries that they occupied in Europe. In Israel fewer than 200,000 survivors of the Holocaust remain among the living. The public reading of names of Holocaust victims proceeded at sites around Israel, including the Knesset. Six survivors symbolically lit six torches in memory of the six million who perished.

Information gathering around the world has produced new statistics on the savage pathology of anti-Semitism globally. A rise in Europe of extremist right-wing parties has been accompanied by a rise in anti-Semitism, sweeping across the continent. The re-growth of fascism has coupled with increased immigration from Muslim-majority countries to make for a toxic mix of Middle-East and Eastern Europe anti-Semitism, though France is singled out for its level of anti-Semitic attacks.

Iran, the nation that currently poses the most serious existential threat against Israel through its virulent hatred of the country, a Jewish nation established within a geography dedicated to Islam, has finally achieved the disinterested green light from Western countries initially concerned over its embarkation on a nuclear-weapons search.

The country most representative of supporting international terrorism, and which has engaged in violent terrorism abroad, which oppresses its own citizens, and which provides munitions and practical assistance to a fellow tyrannical regime intent on bludgeoning dissent is shrugged off as a threat to the world order.

But Jews take comfort where they may. Any advance, however slight, in their relations with those who have and continue to mount violent threats against its existence, leaves hope of better days to come.

Unfortunately, when an admission of compassionate support emanates from the crocodile lips of a Palestinian president whose doctoral thesis during his university days in Moscow related to understating the vile malevolence of the Holocaust and theorizing that there was a pact between Zionists and Hitler, that comfort hits a low ebb indeed.

Lodz, Poland, Abusing the Rabbi of Lodz - the Rabbi is Seated on a Wagon and Bears a Sign Reading - 'We Wanted the War'    Film and Photo Archive, Yad Vashem