There is something very disturbing, even if not surprising, in the fact that those who ultimately decided to conduct an investigation against Abu Mazen on the charge of Holocaust denial, are the Germans and not us.
In Germany, they were really surprised to discover the horns that were sticking out on the head of the elderly terrorist.
We have known about them for a long time, although we tend to suppress them, as if for reasons of politeness.
Or because it causes us unbearable embarrassment.
The only ones who mention the matter are some distinctly right-wing journalists, who don't mind being considered terrible snobs.
Their opponents do not claim that they are lying, but that the mere probing of the matter thwarts any chance of future peace.
Tom Segev claimed more than once that this issue should be left to chance.
I believe that this is not only nonsense, but a serious and dangerous mistake.
If there is ever to be peace here, if there is to be a future here, it will have to be based on the ability to look straight and tell the truth.
A truth that begins with us not flowing with erasing history and our place in it.
And from that we also have zero tolerance for joyous demonstrations by the Arab citizens of Israel after a bus was shot and a pregnant woman was injured.
We have been considering the research and study of the Holocaust for years.
It may be time to study its detractors as well.
It will start with us boldly and loudly admitting that Holocaust denial, in most cases and with the Palestinian leader in particular, is not some unruly curl or stain on the hem of the garment.
She never "Oh yeah, and besides I don't believe it's like everyone's telling."
And she is certainly not something that can be dismissed with the popular (and unbearable) line "Let's agree to disagree".
We should understand that Holocaust denial is a fundamental cornerstone of the view, and often simply an obsession, of those who are not only the worst of our enemies, but also those who make their own people miserable.
I am going to state the obvious here.
I may have to apologize for that in advance.
But from my conversations with young people, I get the impression that nothing is taken for granted.
Well, in recent years a kind of folklore has developed that makes extensive use of the title "deniers".
This may be confusing.
Some people claim that there was never a corona here, or that the Apollo spacecraft never really landed on the moon.
That the earth is flat, or that all the claims regarding the children of Yemen are based on error.
We started calling all of them "deniers", and we noticed that many of them - on the spectrum between the bizarre and the unbearable - also show a rather obsessive attitude towards the denial they cultivate.
There are also certain similarities between all deniers.
There is no point, for example, in trying to politely correct their mistake.
It is certainly pointless to try to direct them to a suitable bibliography.
There is no problem here at all with reading comprehension or sources of information.
But holocaust deniers are really a different story, because holocaust deniers are always antisemitic.
If we're honest, classic Holocaust denial says something like - and I apologize in advance to the readers - "Auschwitz never happened, and it's a shame it didn't happen."
A similar characteristic is not found in global warming deniers, for example.
They can claim that there is no problem in continuing to burn coal or use disposable utensils, but it is hard to assume that we will meet an environmental denier who wishes the world and humanity exactly the catastrophes that he claims should not be feared.
Indeed, one has to be an extremely wretched creature to utter a statement like "Humanity is not facing danger, and it's a shame!", but that's exactly what a person is saying who keeps insisting that "Yad Vashem" is an institution that cultivates a myth that has nothing behind it.
You don't have to scratch a lot to reach the anti-Semitic layer.
There is reason to congratulate the fact that Holocaust deniers are obsessive types.
Thanks to that obsession, the same words escaped Abu Mazen that he is currently trying to escape from.
There is no reason for Israel, as a country and as an idea, to assist him in the work of rescue.
And yes, there is room to thank Abu Mazen himself.
He unwittingly gave the State of Israel a priceless explanatory tool.
We have been struggling on this front for years.
Experts claim for the protocol, and outside of it, that there is not much that can be done about it.
In a world where the moral concept rests on the division between "privileged" and "victims", the Palestinian narrative has a strong, invincible card, and they know how to play it.
But one distilled exit from Abu Mazen's seminary house can do what thousands of diplomats in shiny suits and flimsy arguments have not done.
If only we agree to accept the gift, open it and use it.
If we too, and not only the Germans, open cases on Holocaust denial.
Most Israelis believe that the Palestinian propaganda is a bluff.
We hold our heads in frustration.
And not only because the concept of "privileges/victims" is not acceptable to us.
But precisely because of that little section with the denial, which knocks to the ground the bluff that was the bestseller, as if the return of Zion is the story of a bunch of satisfied and smug European colonialists who landed one day with all their might on a rural and innocent native population.
To mention who supported Nazi imperialism, sympathized with it, and made every effort to drown the few survivors in the sea, only to later make up the story as if he himself was a victim, survivor and refugee.
There were not many nations in the world that reacted with sorrow to the containment of the German forces in North Africa, so what wonder they try to deny it?
I'm not saying that we don't have more urgent tasks ahead of us.
We have an internal conflict to manage.
To split more and more parties, just to address the public with a call to boycott and persecute those who split - the traitors, the converts, the fifth brother-in-law.
I'm not disrespecting.
Before we turn worlds upside down to justify the house we built here, maybe we should really stop tearing it apart from the inside with such determination.
The officers' pool
At the beginning of the summer we had the chance to join a sort of chopper weekend for reserve officers.
These families that hold the country on their shoulders.
The atmosphere was pleasant.
The hotel was reasonable.
The pool was a pool.
The officers represented an interesting cross section of the Israeli scale.
A little more kippah wearers than their weight in the population.
A little more peripheral than central, relative to their representation in the media.
There were almost no black caps, but all the rest - sizes and colors - will be displayed there with a wide hand.
They looked after their cute kids, drank coffee or Coke Zero, and talked a lot.
A lot of concern was heard there.
A lot will happen.
Mainly it bothered them if they and what they represent still constitute a majority in the country.
There were other guests at the hotel that weekend.
One family celebrated some happy event.
They reached the edge of the pool, approached the lifeguard, and without saying a word took the whole pile of towels, but all of them, and collected them.
so be it.
Everyone who came after them was already left without a towel.
Children started to come out of the water and shiver with cold.
But anyone who dared to voice a protest was told, "We paid here!", and in the air rose the slight fragrance that soon plastic chairs would fly.
To my great joy, no one came forward to preach morality, and no speech along the lines of "do you-have-any-concept-what-these-people-whom-you-took-the-towels-are-doing-for-you?"
have not heard.
Not out loud, anyway.
The human mind will always manage to lock onto the depressing point and let it color an entire experience.
Like one broken tooth in a beautiful woman's mouth.
At the table behind us, they summed up the experience with the understanding that the reserve servants may still represent the majority here, but in the power of the little mischief there is something that will always steal the show.
Life as a bag of sunfrost.
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
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