One of the reasons I have avoided writing so far, I think, is that the parallel I feel compelled to make is one that I hate to invoke. I intentionally avoid making comparisons with the Holocaust, as almost any contrast cheapens the sanctity of that event\u2019s memory. It also is unavoidably an exaggeration \u2013 nothing can compare to the Holocaust. And so, we should not be in the business of raising false equivalencies.<\/p>\n
But not everyone subscribes to my hesitancy. More than one Israeli I spoke to referred to Kibbutz Be\u2019eri as \u201cAuschwitz.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although I was guided around the sites of the Oct. 7 atrocities by a senior Israeli military official, we were denied entry to Be\u2019eri, which came as a relief. I didn\u2019t want to make the choice not to go in, but I was glad that decision was made for me.<\/p>\n
I had to ask myself \u2013 as other people asked me \u2013 why I was compelled to visit these places in the first place? I had not, for example, taken the opportunity to watch the footage that screened in Vancouver last year of the most terrible carnage from Oct. 7. I believed that I knew enough of what happened that I did not need to be exposed to the images so graphically. (There are people, on the other hand, who I think should be forced to watch such footage.)<\/p>\n
I could say no to the video but, in Israel, I felt an obligation to bear witness in what small way I could by visiting the Nova festival site and other locations, including Highway 232. My guide, who was among the first on the scene during the morning of Oct. 7, provided (as you can imagine) a jarring play-by-play of what he witnessed, saw, heard and smelled that day.<\/p>\n
As I watch documentaries and continue to read about the events, and hear from eyewitnesses, including those who defended their kibbutzim, and military personnel who were among the first on the scene, it is almost impossible for the mind not to go to historical parallels.<\/p>\n
I hear stories of people pretending to be dead for hours while murderous attackers surrounded them. Testimony recounts the nonchalant murder of the elderly, babies, anyone and everyone the terrorists could kill \u2013 as \u00a0 <\/span>well as the collaboration of \u201cordinary\u201d civilians.<\/p>\n The ripping apart of families. Parents shielding their children from gunshots. Families huddling as they are engulfed in flames. Survivors\u2019 stories of screams still ringing in their ears. Jews recalling what they were sure were the last moments of their life. Acts of brutality that defy human imagination. Sadistic jubilation while perpetrating acts that make most people recoil. Residents of a village reconnoitring after the catastrophe to determine who remains alive.<\/p>\n The parallels are, to me at least, unavoidable.<\/p>\n There is, of course, a quantitative chasm between this modern horror and that of the Shoah. It is this difference that also makes comparisons so incredibly problematic. But it is the qualitative experiences, the grotesque similarities between Nazi atrocities and those of Hamas, that force the mind to go in that direction.<\/p>\n While visiting Jerusalem, I stumbled upon a pathway that begins at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum and research centre, and winds through the military cemeteries in which the casualties of Israel\u2019s successive defensive wars and endless terror attacks are buried, as are most of the country\u2019s prime ministers, presidents and other leading figures. The pathway ends at the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the man most credited with making real the dream of a Jewish state, and adjacent to the museum that tells his life story.<\/p>\n The message here is that, from the moral abyss of the Holocaust to the sustaining of national self-determination as envisioned by Herzl, the path has had an unimaginable human cost.<\/p>\n
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