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In the post-Arafat era, Israelis and Palestinians are struggling once again to find a way to peace. But until each side honestly tries to understand and empathize with the other's catastrophe, it is likely to be a dialogue of the deaf.
One of the most courageous statements ever to come from the pen of a Jewish-Israeli intellectual was made by philosopher and historian Yehuda Elkana more than a decade ago. In an article titled "In Praise of Forgetting," Elkana called upon Israel's political, cultural and educational elite to "forget the Holocaust." "I do not envision today," wrote Elkana, "a more important political and educational task for the leaders of this nation than to mobilize on behalf of life, to devote themselves to building our future and not to occupy themselves from sunrise to sunset with the symbols, the ceremonies, and the 'lessons' of the Holocaust. It is incumbent upon them to uproot the domination of historical 'remembrance' on our lives."
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