Why Bibi Won't Be at Auschwitz
History is ignored. Morality is inverted. And suddenly, the victim is seen as the villain.
It’s not merely Orwellian. It’s nauseatingly sick, and predictably so.
Next month, on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, delegations from countries across the world will attend the official commemoration in Poland. The prime minister of Israel - that is, the prime minister of the Jewish state, the state that represents the victims of the greatest atrocity in human history - will not be there. Why? Because if Benyamin Netanyahu were to step on Polish soil, he would immediately be arrested, as Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself attested. His arrest would be based on the International Criminal Court’s decision that he and former defense minister Yoav Gallant should be tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
These charges are absurd and spurious - and random. Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the deaths of over half a million Syrian civilians - some of them through the chemical nerve agent sarin… and the ICC has been silent. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran is responsible for hundreds of deaths in Iran, and thousands across the world through his direct terrorist proxies… and the ICC has been silent. The late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah fired missiles and drones into Israel for months on end, killing innocents and displacing tens of thousands… and the ICC has been silent. Only the democratically elected leaders of a country defending itself from an attempted genocide, which by every imaginable standard has been historically careful about protecting Gazan civilians, is targeted by the International Criminal Court.
The absence of Israeli leaders from the Auschwitz commemoration on January 27th - International Holocaust Remembrance Day - will further cement the insidious consensus that the Holocaust was a human tragedy, rather than primarily a Jewish one. Just as history is ignored and submerged by those who deny any Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, it is similarly undermined with the implicit downplaying of the connection between Jews living in Israel today and the Holocaust. Hitler may have targeted Jews, but the world - not the Jewish people - was the real victim. And, this twisted reasoning continues, Israel is the moral descendant of the Nazi murderers, rather than the victims who were gassed and cremated in Auschwitz. (This is not speculation; see the cartoons below.)
First logic and morality are inverted. Then history is distorted. And then the combination of the two creates a cycle where, inevitably, Jews - and Israel - are believed to be the epitome of evil.
The outcry against this travesty needs to be louder. I will have more to say about that next week.
You raise a good point that if other political villains have not been searched by ICC, then why should Israeli PM be. There is always some politics in these decisions. And if you followed the follow-up after you published (the recent statement of Poland that after all, Netanyahu can come) that is also a political, not moral, decision. This or that way, Auschwitz will be abused by politicians of all kinds, and over the past years this has happened increasingly (Hungary, Russia, Poland, Germany, Israel). And how about banning all politicians from Auschwitz?
https://nomadicmind.substack.com/p/poland-vs-netanyahu-memory-on-trial?r=31fxoh
In support of our prime-minister not going to Poland for the 80 year anniversary, I would advise that no official or even regular Israeli citizen attend this ceremony. Perhaps supporting Jews from other countries might feel the need to also avoid this anniversary in Poland too!