sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

I wish I had time to write something more thoughtful - this is more of a bizarre linkog of related stuff that's been in my head recently. Please regard it as first-draft: I try and be more thoughtful than a brain-dump for serious topics.

Provisos over.

So Mark Levene in the Independent thinks Holocaust Day is misused - we've forgotten about refugees, which is what it's really about, apparently.

I went to the Intelligence Sqaured debate on Zionism Tuesday night - I made pages and pages of notes, but briefly, it was the best secular Jew-spotting there is. I was surprised how people identified themselves as "Jews" rather than Jewish (or Jew-ish), but apparently that's very twentyfirst century. While I don't in any way think there are some debates Jews should have behind closed doors, in case "they" hear us, there was something more than disturbing about hearing Amira Hass say "inshallah" with such venom. I don't think the debate itself was antisemitic - it was interesting. But the framing of the debate now, at this time: makes me wonder.

And now this: in Tuesday's FT, a frankly disturbing piece about how Russian MPs are trying to ban Jewish groups:

"Let us assure you, Mr Prosecutor-General, that there are a large number of well-established facts which lead to the indisputable conclusion: the negative assessment by Russian patriots of typical Jewish qualities and [their] actions against non-Jews are based on true facts and what is more these actions are not accidental, but prescribed by Judaism and have been practised over the past 2000 years," the letter said. "Therefore, statements and publications against Jews are self-defence, which may not be stylistically correct, but justified in its essence."

Typical Jewish qualities? P-ulease. And Judaism's quite a bit older than 2,000 years.

I carry the cultural heritage of people who expect the worst. (At the weekend over lunch, we had a lengthy conversation about how we all inherently expect Something Bad To Happen, which is why I had 30 litres of water and a mule in my bathroom in case of the war). And I know that the war is over, and I want to think that the suffering helped create a better world. But what I see is encoded antisemitism regularly: a subtle or not-so desire to other us, to notice us, to comment.

Sixty years on, what have we learned?