MIRAH LANGER
Yet, the difference is that Israel will fight to ensure it serves as the homeland of all the Jewish people.
“If anti-Semitism has survived these thousands of years and keeps rearing its head, time and time again, as we see in Pittsburgh and San Diego, or in Wellington cemetery in Cape Town, then it is my unfortunate conclusion that is here to stay.”
The close proximity of Pesach and Yom HaShoah is a reminder of our ongoing persecution as a people, Keinan said. Yet, the equally close proximity of Yom Ha’atzmaut, the date that marks the establishment of the modern state of Israel, is also key.
“These three events mark the continuous manifestation of anti-Semitism, and the only possible response to it is a strong and independent Israel to which any Jew can choose to come.”
Keinan said the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement was one of the most recent and vitriolic forms of anti-Semitism.
“Modern anti-Semites, mostly in BDS, understand perfectly that in a world where Jews have a safe haven, a Holocaust will not occur again. That is why they are aiming their obsession towards undermining the global legitimacy of the state of Israel.”
“The leaders of Iran say it straight out, by demanding that Israel will be erased from the map. BDS wants the same thing, but is just phrasing it in a more polite way.”
Yet, said Keinan, it was also important to “zoom out” and look at the bigger picture.
“What you see [in South Africa] is so many elements in your country openly supporting BDS. What I see when I zoom out is that this is happening in only one country that is not Muslim or Arab, and that there are more than one hundred countries that are acting differently.
“What you see around you is a country that may downgrade its relations with Israel; what I see when I zoom out, is that there are so many countries that are looking only to upgrade their relationship with Israel,” he said.
Furthermore, Israel had thrived in spite of BDS.
“BDS has called for an economic boycott of Israel for 18 years. What I see is the simple fact that in the past 18 years, while this so-called successful boycott takes place, the economy of Israel has grown 65%.”
The ceremony’s keynote address was delivered by Baron Kevin Shinkwin, a peer at the British House of Lords.
Shinkwin emphasised that the duty to remember was a retort against the Nazis’ aim to break down the bonds of humanity.
“Surely [the Holocaust] was a war against humanity’s memory, based on the astoundingly arrogant assumption that evil would triumph to such an extent that humanity’s memory would be erased.”
Shinkwin said that, as a non-Jew, when he first began trying to understand the Holocaust, the overarching question had always been how the Nazis could have done what they did to the Jews.
Later, the question changed and became, “How could we have done this to ourselves?
The audience also heard the first-hand account of Holocaust survivor Irene Fainman.
Fainman detailed her internment as a little girl of six, first at Westerbork Transit Camp and later at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. While her mother and brother survived along with her, her father did not.
Recalling the first time she entered the barracks at Ravensbrück, she detailed how the smell of “unwashed human bodies, urine, faeces, and above all else, fear,” hit her.
“There were three-tiered bunks with three or four women per bunk. They were emaciated. They had sunken cheeks, bulging eyes, and shaven heads. Some of them tried to touch my hair and face… I just screamed and screamed.”
It is an experience, said Fainman, which still causes nightmares.
