It has been sixty years since the birth of the new state of Israel in the lands of Palestine. A human Life indeed.

 Time to reflect and somberly celebrate.  No fireworks needed but restrained joy and mature thinking for the next 60 years. It is a lifetime for a human being and many who were born in the newly freed state in 1948 have now completed their life’s journey…

The nation has accomplished miracles and has come the time now to manifest these miracles in the peace process that will ensure it’s perpetual existence. No longer content with the regional hegemony the state of Israel should look at being part of a greater alliance and to be a leader at that. Perhaps an alliance and an integration with the European Union must be the center focus of it’s diplomacy. Perhaps the diplomatic efforts would be best focused to integrate the Mediterranean nations in a new economic Union  first and then into a trading alliance with the rest of Europe. At any rate Israel now must stop being introspective and spread it’s wings and vision to the future that the human family affords. Generocity is a trait of maturity and the ability to make wise judgements without the impulses of adolescence.  Here too Israel might be well served to remember that “might doesn’t make right”… An important lesson for the mightiest of this earth as they are humbled when they forget.

But this is a moment of celebration and as Passover is a time of sharing, family and remembrance; so we must not forget the Yad Vashem. These words are taken from the bible as spoken by Isaiah : “For so says the Lord those who will be righteous ‘I will give them in My house and in My walls a “Yad vaShem” (place and a name), better than sons and daughters; an everlasting name I will give them, which will not be discontinued.’” 

Here is the magnificence of the state of Israel in fullfiling the prophesy: “I will give them in My house and in My walls a “Yad vaShem” (place and a name), better than sons and daughters…”Yad Vashem in Israel personifies for all of us the memory of a not too distant past that we seem to repeat with ferocious regularity.  Lest we forget we need the moral courage to remember.

Israel can claim the high moral ground in reconcilation and forgiveness but not forgetfullness. For the long term of humanity’s existence this wil be far more important than any military campaign into foreign teritorries to ensure breathing space. This will be far more important than building walls to contain unruly neighborhs.

If you want a solution you must find it in the plain of ideas…the place where human movements take hold and blossom. This is a bold campaign into human Consciousness, sure to alter the dynamic of today’s conflicts in a long view of the future. Israel can become the Switzerland of human Morality. The future repository of human deeds. Morality is the way to the riches of our humanity and the beauty of it is that is instantly shared by all. Regardless of what religious software we run into our brains, we all share morality deep within. Let us appeal to this treasure of the human heart.

Let’s bring to Yad Vashem the names of all those who perished in senseless genocides of the last century and carve in stone their names along with those of all the righteous people who saved human beings in all the genocides within our recent history.  Let’s celebrate the Righteous among nations every year in a more magnificent celebration as an Olympic celebration of the Human Spirit. Reward the righteous and create a culture of Morality. One need not look far.  The history of modern nations and nationalism is rife with similar genocides. Early last century, the quiet and studiously silent world opinion towards the Armenian genocide taught the German Officers, advising the ottoman army, serving and assisting the Turkish officers responsible for the Armenian genocide in Turkey, that they can do the same with impunity to the Jews of Europe and other undesirables. They were taught that they could completely destroy a group of humanity without repercussions, only if they manage to keep the world quiet about it.  It taught them to separate the victims from their world, their society and their comunity by dehumanizing them. Three sort decades later one can see the results of their genocide “education”.  Auschwitz was an idustrial society’s response, methodology and improvement to the inefficient pogroms and long forced killing marches of the starved and thirsty Armenians into the Anatolian dustbowl. A circular pointless and directionless march of the rags of humanity of the Armenians with the simple goal of extinction down to the last child. When no more Armenians were left alive the march ended and the soldiers went home with their loot in golden teeth, jewellery, even clothes to be sold in the bazaars of Anatolia and all the way to Istanbul. Methodical German officers documented this ethnic annihilation process and sought to improve upon it for the next go round. Armenian holocaust and Jewish Shoah are intricately interwoven and related even through the intermarriages of Armenians and Jews in Iconium and Smyrna.

Look further in the future or our recent past: Cambodia, Rwanda, Ex-Yugoslavia, Bosnia in the Balkans, and you soon see a pattern emerging where the victors who practice genocide do so with impunity. World opinion and outrage are stifled. Foreign intervention in the interest of diplomacy stays off the table or is used as a too little too late diversion.   Israel knows this and Yad Vashem reminds me of this past.  But now we experience genocides in Darfur in Burma in Tibet and still we stay silent… for we are the neighbors who stayed quiet or even assisted in benefiting from “the Shoah”, the holocaust.

But there is celebration here too. The human spirit persists and remembers those righteous of all nations who fought against this injustice. Yad Vashem is the place for this celebration, for nowhere else the dignity of suffering and the liberation of compassion can be more evident in the human heart.  Israel and the Jewish state have been good guardians of this place and name for sixty years and we hope they will continue to do so for ever. Keep the ideas of Yad Vashem alive as long as human beings are compelled to shed each others blood hoping to liberate us someday of this killing ritual that waters down the tree of life.

Let’s not forget no victim and no righteous amongst us for we are want to repeat it.

Israel on it’s birthday next month must think of opening up Yad Vashem to all the genocide victims and all the righteous people of the nations for all humanity is one and here is the best place to remember this. Happy Birthday.