Obsessive-compulsive commemoration

By Benjamin Weinthal
BERLIN - The end of each January is punctuated by Holocaust commemoration events across Europe, and this year, the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, should be no different. Yet in recent years, Shoah remembrance has come to resemble a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), where people perform numbing rituals instead of undertaking the uncomfortable and dirty business of combating contemporary anti-Semitism. The fear of contamination underlies the obsessive-compulsive's ritual of repeatedly washing hands, and in the same way, many participants and organizers of Holocaust memorial events immerse themselves in a feel-good compulsion devoid of a connection to reality. The OCD sufferer, however, often knows his repetitive behavior is nonsensical and irrational, even if he cannot resist it. The fluffy exercises intended to preserve the memory of the victims of Nazism - and to symbolize an anti-fascist attitude - are not limited to the events surrounding International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. Many policy makers, academics and politicians in Germany seem to be consumed year-round with preventing harm to dead Jews, but one wonders if this doesn't come at the expense of focusing on threats to living ones. Petra Pau, a Left Party MP in the Bundestag, frequently reports on her parliamentary investigations into vandalized Jewish cemeteries in Germany. Yet Pau avoids criticizing members of her party who equate Israel with Nazi Germany, or attended pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah rallies during Operation Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War. Wolfgang Gehrcke, for example, her party's spokesman on foreign policy matters, is a frequent participant in such Israel hate festivals.
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Gehrcke is hardly alone. When more than 100,000 Germans participated in rallies organized by German Muslim organizations a year ago during Israel's incursion into Gaza - demonstrations that included incitement to the crowds to chant "Kill, kill Jews" and "Kill, kill Israelis" - not a single German MP was willing to initiate a parliamentary investigation.
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haaretz.com