Why not allow families of the Nazi army to take part in Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies? Most of them didn't kill anyone.
If "grief is grief, and it brings us together," as the Supreme Court justices who ruled that the Defense Ministry must allow families of terrorists to participate in a joint Memorial Day ceremony in Tel Aviv along with the families of victims of terrorism – well, why not?
The public outcry demonstrates that most of the Jewish public in Israel does not think the way the Supreme Court does. Otherwise, they would stand on the podium and tell the organizers of the joint ceremony to get lost. Everyone should know: most victims of terrorism – both those who were wounded themselves and those who lost loved ones – think that there is no comparison between the parents of the murdered and the parents of the murderers.
Here are a few pearls from the Supreme Court: "There are 99 ways to commemorate. There are 99 ways to express bereavement," or "Sometimes, bereavement, as a shared fate, can serve as a source of empathy and unity, no matter how difficult things are."
And then comes the key line. One justice ended her remarks by quoting a poem by Moti Hammer: "One Human Tapestry." Do you get it? All of us, both the murdered and the murderers, are one "live human tapestry. When the Supreme Court does not make a distinction between terrorists and legitimate soldiers who take care to maintain purity of arms and sometimes pay for it with their lives or are wounded (as happened to me), it cheapens the principle that it preaches, or exempts the Palestinians from the obligation of purity of arms. The pages of the ruling contain an almost explicit go-ahead for the Palestinians to commit acts of murder and terrorism as part of their national struggle against us. That is the message and it is a sad development in Supreme Court rulings.
The bereaved families and victims of terrorism who initiated the ceremony as an alternative to commemorating fallen IDF soldiers and terror victims have pained the majority of the grieving families and the wounded. Their conduct, in an attempt to speak well of the victims, is reminiscent of Stockholm syndrome in which the abducted begin to identify with their kidnappers. The Jewish people self-flagellating is an old story. Jews have always tried to find among ourselves the reasons why Jews are hated.
After the terrorist attack that killed the son of one of the main activists of the group that organized the event, she called a friend from school, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and blamed the attack on him.
"You're at fault," she shouted, in genuine grief. The small but influential and well-funded group maintains a discourse in which they blame terrorism on settlers and the (non-)occupation. Not all of them justify terrorism but nearly all of them understand it. Whereas for me, the son of Holocaust survivors, everything is clear. There is one side that murders young women and children and there is a side that defends them. For me, there is no "one live human tapestry" that unites the attacker and the attacked. For me, there is one holy principle: All Jewish people are responsible for each other.
