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The Holocaust Did Not Create Israel

(Ha'aretz) Einat Wilf - Music conductor Daniel Barenboim wrote in Ha'aretz on June 8 that Israel exists because of the Holocaust. The claim is that Israel "was given" to the Jewish people by the guilt-ridden world after the Holocaust. Israel was not "given" to the Jews. The last thing on the agenda of the European nations at the end of World War II was guilt feelings toward the Jews. Just as India and Pakistan and other nations did not need the murder of a third of their people to receive a country at that time, the Jewish people would have obtained its own state at the end of World War II, not because of the Holocaust, but rather because of the dismantling of the British empire as a result of the war. Denying Zionism means denying that Jews can, by force of vision, desire and work, act as an active agent and shape a future in which they are not the victims of others. Denying Zionism means that the State of Israel becomes a "gift" that was given by others - not as a result of what the Jews did by and for themselves. Moreover, denying Zionism turns Israel - alone among all countries in the world - into a conditional state, which is permitted to exist as long as those who received it, by grace and not by right, will find favor in the eyes of those who "gave" them the country. The right of the Jewish people to have a country in its own homeland is a universal right, which is reserved for every people - the right to stand on its own authority and to control its fate. The writer, a senior fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute, is a former Knesset member.
2017-06-15 00:00:00
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