Jeff Dunetz

We light a memorial candle on Yom HaShoah as a recognition that the souls of the victims are still alive in our hearts and that many entire families were murdered meaning there are none left to mourn for them. We light a memorial candle on Yom HaShoah to remember never to forget.

This year’s commemoration is particularly relevant as one recent report showed anti-Semitic violence increased by 40% during the past year, the President of the United States has determined that certain areas of Jerusalem must be Judenrein even if Jewish citizens buy homes from Arab citizens. This year the UN continued to make Israel their public whipping boy, and when Israel defend itself against terrorists who used their own people as human shields, it was Israel who was criticized. This year an anti-Semite like Al Sharpton can meet with Presidents and mayors, and the U.S. can attempt a deal with a rogue regime, a deal that at best allows them to remain on the precipice of the ultimate weapon which it intends to use to commit another Holocaust. And when the Prime Minister of the Jewish State comes to the U.S. in an attempt to prevent a nuclear holocaust, he is subject to ad hominem attacks by the Obama administration and outright anti-Semitism by the Congressional Black Caucus. […]

The Holocaust is unique in its volume and horrors and is a singular event in world history, yes there are other genocides and other horrors even to the Jews. But generally the genocide is waged to suppress a group, to take their territory, or some economic reason like to enslave a people. This was different the Jews had no territory, an held relatively little power. In the Shoah Jews were taken from all over Europe just to be killed. And friendly supposedly civilized leaders like Franklyn Roosevelt and Winston Churchill sentence hundreds of thousands to death because they didn’t want more Jews in their country.

This is what people don’t understand about the Shoah and Israel. Israel wasn’t created because of some compensation for the Holocaust, Israel was always the home of the Jews. Just because we didn’t run the land, Jews have lived there since Joshua and his band of Israelites marched around Jericho for seven straight days, sounded their shofars and made the walls come tumbling down.

The Jewish land became a Jewish state for the first time in almost 2,000 years because the lesson of the Holocaust was that it was too dangerous for the Jewish people to continue to be homeless and powerless. Or in the words of Elie Weisel we learned to trust our enemy’s threats more than our friends promises.