1. The days between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Independence Day (as well as Memorial Day for Israel's Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, which precedes it and to which it is inextricably linked) are the national equivalent of the 10 days of repentance (the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur). This connection between the Holocaust and our revival has been taken advantage of by our enemies and opponents. From the moment we escaped the ashes of the ovens by the skin of our teeth and established a state, a horrible comparison has been drawn between what happened to us and what happened to the Arabs here. British historian Professor Arnold Toynbee contributed to this in the 1950s, when he compared Israel's behavior toward the Arabs from 1947 onward to the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. He admitted that, statistically speaking, there was no comparison, but he insisted that from a "moral perspective" the comparison stands. It was Dr. Yaakov Herzog, one of the most brilliant diplomats to serve the state of Israel, who fought well with Toynbee. 2. The outrageous comparison continued to spread among Western intelligentsia, who coined the term "victims of victims," that is to say, the poor Palestinians paid the price for the Nazis' cruelty toward the Jews and became the victims of the Jews. Along with this claim comes the variably cloaked statement according to which the Jews do not have a historical and legal right to the Land of Israel. Over the last 50 years, many books and articles about World War II and the Holocaust have been published, alongside books and articles on the War of Independence. Memorial days are planted deep within our nation's heritage -- remembrance not just in the passive sense, but in the active sense as well: "Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you" (Deuteronomy 32:7). Remembrance requires studying and upkeep, and it is critical -- without it, we would be like a leaf floating along the paths of history. 3. The murder of 6 million of our people at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices was both premeditated and systematic. It is unprecedented in all of history. Even in 1944, when the Nazis were retreating, the killing machine did not stop operating, and within a few months, about half a million Hungarian Jews were annihilated. On the other side of the equation is the return to Zion. The Jewish people began to return home at the end of the 18th century, with the disciples of the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman Kremer, followed later on by the waves of aliyah and the establishment of the Zionist movement. The honest among the region's Arabs admitted that the Jews were returning home, and that this was in keeping with their sacred traditions, which spoke of the eventual return of the Jews to their land. On Jan. 3, 1919, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, on behalf of the Zionist movement, and Emir Faisal, on behalf of the Kingdom of Hejaz, signed an agreement in London that was meant to settle issues between the two national movements. It wasn't only the impartial nations of the world that firmly acknowledged our historical right -- with the Balfour Declaration, at the League of Nations that was established after World War I and at the U.N. -- the Arabs also acknowledged it. Emir Faisal opened his letter to Weizmann's associate, Felix Frankfurter, by wishing "the Jews a most hearty welcome home." Some 30 years later, the United Nations General Assembly decided upon the division of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state (note: an Arab state, not a Palestinian one, as "Palestine" also included the Jews as a national group). The Jewish representatives accepted the resolution, while the Arab states rejected it and immediately declared that they would work to foil it. Then-U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie wrote in his book: "From the first week of December 1947, disorder in Palestine had begun to mount. The Arabs repeatedly had asserted that they would resist partition by force. They seemed to be determined to drive that point home by assaults upon the Jewish community in Palestine" ("In the Cause of Peace: Seven Years with the United Nations"). On Jan. 21, 1948, British representative to the U.N. Sir Alexander Cadogan spoke to the Security Council of "the Arabs in Palestine, to whom the killing of Jews now transcends all other considerations." On Feb. 16, the U.N. Palestine Commission reported that "powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein." With the termination of the British Mandate and the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel, Arab armies invaded the fledgling state. They told the United Nations that their involvement would restore "justice and order" to a place that had fallen into chaos and turmoil. Today we are still familiar with that brand of "justice" -- just take a look at our neighbor, Syria. The Arab League's secretary general at the time, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam (Pasha), said on a BBC Radio broadcast on May 15, 1948: "This war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades." Middle East scholar Benny Morris wrote in his book that British Ambassador to Amman Sir Alec Kirkbride asked Azzam how powerful he estimated the Jewish army to be. He reported that Azzam waved his hands and muttered: "It does not matter how many [Jews] there are. We will sweep them into the sea." 4. Another connection between the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel can be found in the leader of the Arabs in Palestine at the time, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Researcher Stefan Possony wrote in his book "Waking Up the Giant" that when the mufti arrived in Nazi Germany, he offered his talents to the service of the Fuehrer. The mufti met Hitler in November 1941. Possony wrote that Hitler told the mufti that he was first and foremost fighting the Jews "to the death," and that the Jews run both Britain and the Soviet Union. Hitler vowed to continue his war until "the complete destruction of the Jewish-Bolshevik regime," also promising to declare Arab independence when he reached the South Caucasus. The mufti submitted several drafts on this topic. The agreed-upon version included a clause giving the Arabs the right to solve the "Jewish problem" in Palestine and in other Arab countries using the same system employed in Europe. Possony went on to write that the mufti kept in close contact with SS commander Heinrich Himmler and with other officials in the SS and the Gestapo office, constantly proposing that Jerusalem and Tel Aviv be bombed. There is reliable evidence indicating that he was likely made aware of the Final Solution. He pressured Himmler to continue and even to expand efforts to destroy European Jewry and strongly protested to the Germans each time he heard they were allowing Jews to emigrate, Possony wrote. His pressure alone is thought to have been a driving factor in preventing Hungary's Jews from being saved. 5. So here is the correct equation: The Jewish people were attacked in both instances, but with different results. In the first part, we were attacked by Nazi Germany, despite the fact that we never declared war against it. In this attack, a third of our people were destroyed, most of them without having fought back. In the second part of the equation, we were attacked again -- this time by the Arabs of the region, about two years after the Holocaust, but we defended ourselves and we won. Had the Arabs won, God forbid, they would have continued the Nazis' efforts and slaughtered the Jews of Israel. The Nakba they mark in memory of their disaster is simply a lament over the missed opportunity to destroy us. Indeed, their day of tragedy is our day of joy.
