Just wondering.

More and more I wonder about the Israelis. I have lost count of the number of books I have read about the holocaust. Each time shocked anew at the insensitivity of the perpetrators but also acknowledging to myself that, given the right circumstances, every country is capable of acting with the same inhumanity shown by Nazi Germany. Except Israel, surely?

But sadly, no. Over the past decade the rhetoric flowing from Israel about the Palestinians reminds me of apartheid South Africa’s appeals for understanding. You cannot understand us, they used to say, until you have lived here. Well, I did go and live there. What I found was a government and most of the white people in the country with a distorted view of the world. A world shaped in their image and identified by rabid racism, privilege, and hate.  

So now I have something else to wonder about: How remarkable it is that the only people who have not learned from the holocaust are the children of the survivors.