Israel’s President Warns Against Using The Holocaust To Justify Israel

Reuven Rivlin Image by Getty Images

By Naomi Zeveloff April 24, 2017

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin spoke against using the Holocaust as the only lens through which to understand Jewish history, warning that such an approach could damage Israel’s relations with the world community.

“We need to ask ourselves: Whether, when we are involved only in preventing a Shoah, are we capable of most effectively meeting the various challenges that face us?” he said in a speech on Sunday ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day. “The Shoah is permanently branded in our flesh. Each of us has a number on our arm. Nevertheless, the Shoah is not the lens through which we should examine our past and our future.”

Rivlin said he disagreed with other Israeli leaders who invoked the Holocaust in modern warfare, such as former Prime Minister Menachem Begin who framed Israeli military ventures in Lebanon in 1982 in terms of preventing another Holocaust.

Rivlin said that the challenge of the Jewish people is to both remember the Holocaust as a unique event that specifically targeted Jews and at the same time to not let it justify modern-day decisions.

Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected] or on Twitter @naomizeveloff

Naomi Zeveloff is the former Middle East correspondent of the Forward, primarily covering Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO