Via the Algemeiner and JNS.org, Ben Cohen suggests scrapping non-Jewish Holocaust commemorations.
So if commemorating the Holocaust in the public sphere requires Jews to play down their affiliation with Israel, and to elide the intimate connection between what the Holocaust represents and the significance of a Jewish state in our own time, then I’d say we are better off without Holocaust Remembrance Day.
I think he's being too kind. The Holocaust is now used as a weapon against Jews. Jewish organizations are already backing out of "Holocaust commemorations", because they serve as a platform to bash Israel and the Jews. Europe loves to remember its dead Jews, and then turns on the ones still living and accuses them of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Who needs it? If that's the lesson Europeans draw from the Holocaust, then I, as a Jew, beg you to stop. Stop teaching about the Holocaust, stop commemorating it, stop putting up those stepping stones that keep on getting vandalized. All this while Jews need armed guards in front of their synagogues and schools. When people can shout "Jews to the gas" and "Death, Death, Israel" in the streets, and the prosecution isn't sure whether it's illegal or whether it's a political protest against another country (in Mainz they decided it's the latter).
Besides which, the anniversary of Kristallnacht and International Holocaust Memorial Day have become special days when Jews are targeted even more than usual.
If there's a good side to it all, I'm really not seeing it.
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