You never know what will strike a nerve.
As the Israeli government moves forward with plans to dismantle Jewish settlements in Gaza, voices from within the settler movement have threatened civil disobedience, even violence, to protest the withdrawal.
That barely raised an eyebrow.
Now, however, as part of a campaign of defiance, some settlers have begun sporting orange Stars of David, deliberately mimicking the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe.
The implication? The Sharon government is no better than the Nazis, and Jewish disengagement from Gaza a mini-Holocaust of its own. That cynical misappropriation of the Shoah did get the attention of the world.
As your grandmother would say, it’s a shanda.
Year after year, a majority of Israelis have expressed willingness to give up occupied territories in exchange for a secure peace. Gaza, with its millions of restive Palestinians, is the obvious starting point for a measured withdrawal.
Yet stubborn Gaza settlers, many driven by an unrealistic ideology of a Greater Israel, have refused to enter the real world.
Despite the geopolitical cost to Israel, they refuse to budge. Despite the government’s generous buy-out offers to ease the transition, they refuse to budge. And despite disgust from across the Jewish world over the orange stars, they refuse to budge.
About a quarter-million Holocaust survivors live in Israel today. Spokespeople from among them swiftly denounced the orange stars. Avner Shalev of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, said the campaign “perverts the historical facts and damages the memory of the Shoah.” Many members of the Knesset have similarly decried the stars.
How much more scolding do these people require?
There are certain things that cannot be trifled with. Among them are the memory and meaning of the Shoah. The symbols, incidents, facts and figures of that event remain the collective property of the Jewish people, indeed of all humanity. They cannot be abused, and certainly not by a few zealots seeking to score political points. They, of all people, should know better.
Thankfully, the secretary-general of a leading settlers council made an eleventh-hour appeal to supporters to scrap the stars, but rank-and-file protesters still may disregard the plea.
It remains true that we American Jews, living far from the eye of the storm, are often too quick to chide our Israeli brothers and sisters.
Not this time. The orange stars are an affront to all Jews. Let us hope the global outcry will spark a change of clothes, if not a change of heart.