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Pro-Palestinian activists are banned from Buchenwald, where survivors vowed to fight for peace
(JTA) — As pro-Palestinian activists were shut out of the former Buchenwald concentration camp this weekend, a timeworn fight about the site’s history resurfaced.
That dispute, which dates back to the camp’s liberation in 1945, centers on how the victims of Buchenwald wanted to be remembered. The activists, a group called Kufiyas in Buchenwald, said their fight for Palestinians upheld a pledge made by thousands of Buchenwald survivors days after they were freed.
The inmates swore to punish the guilty, destroy Nazism and create a new world of peace. That promise, known as the “Oath of Buchenwald,” has been invoked by varying regimes and political movements ever since it was uttered.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald was blocked from holding a pro-Palestinian vigil at the Buchenwald memorial on Sunday after a court in the nearby city of Weimar upheld a police ban. The planned event would have marked the 81st anniversary of Buchenwald’s liberation by U.S. troops — and the day before the Jewish world observes Yom HaShoah, Holocaust memorial day.
Judges decided that the rally would likely “violate the dignity of victims” of the Nazis. The activists were offered the alternative of protesting in downtown Weimar, which they refused.
Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps on German soil, holding Jews along with political prisoners, Roma, gay people and prisoners of war. Roughly 56,000 people were killed there, among them some 11,000 Jews.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald argued that their protest would honor the memory of Buchenwald’s victims together with all “victims of genocide and fascism.” The campaign was formed after a German court ruled that Buchenwald could refuse entry to visitors who wear a Palestinian keffiyeh, which has been adopted by left-wing anti-Israel protesters. The memorial foundation argued that in some contexts, the symbol could be disruptive and undercut the memorial’s purpose. Its critics said the foundation was suppressing speech that criticized Israel — and fell in line with the mission of Holocaust remembrance.
By not addressing “the genocide in Gaza,” Kufiyehs in Buchenwald said the memorial became “a place of historical revisionism and genocide denial.”
The memorial site said that Kufiyas in Buchenwald were the ones abusing history.
“This is a completely inappropriate instrumentalization of the memory of the victims of National Socialism for one’s own political, misanthropic agenda,” Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau, a spokesperson for the memorial foundation, told the German broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. The planned rally was also excoriated by the European Jewish Congress, the Conference of European Rabbis and other groups.
Current-day atrocities have been invoked at Buchenwald before, according to William Niven, an emeritus professor of Nottingham Trent University who teaches German history.
In 1993, about 3,000 people demonstrated on the site against the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during the Holocaust, said in a speech, “Europe has learnt nothing since the Holocaust. Nothing was done to stop the murdering. What happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a posthumous victory for Hitler.”
But Niven said he viewed the planned pro-Palestinian rally as problematic because it would have interrupted the anniversary of the camp’s liberation, a program that annually draws descendants of Buchenwald victims and a dwindling number of survivors. That risked both upsetting the visitors and hijacking their mourning, he said.
“If you’ve got a group of people standing there with political placards or making political statements, then they are transforming that commemorative event into a political act,” Niven said. “They are using it because they’ll get media attention.”
Tair Borchardt, an organizer for the campaign who is Jewish, countered that the activists include a substantial proportion of Jews, among them children and grandchildren of Nazi victims. She said that drawing a direct line between Buchenwald inmates and the Palestinians was their form of commemoration.
“I think that honoring the victims of Nazi fascism also really should be principled in making sure that it doesn’t happen again,” said Borchardt. “And this is what’s happening right now. So drawing these connections, I don’t think it’s a contradiction in honoring the victims at all.”
Kufiyas in Buchenwald is a leftist alliance that includes activists from communist, anti-fascist and Jewish anti-Zionist organizations. The group collaborated in its campaign with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the German group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East.
Rachel Shapiro, an organizer with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, said in a statement that the memorial foundation’s “insistence on the singularity and exceptionalism of the Nazi genocide of European Jews” served to “actively provide cover for Germany’s participation in and funding of the mass murder of Palestinians.”
Shapiro argued that state-funded institutions like the Buchenwald memorial should not singularly decide how Nazi victims are remembered, saying that anti-fascist Jews “wholeheartedly reject the German state dictating conditions around commemoration.”
That is exactly what states do, according to James E. Young, a Holocaust scholar and professor emeritus of Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
“The irony is that by definition, in all national memorial sites everywhere, including Buchenwald, the state always dictates ‘the conditions of commemoration.’ That’s the point,” Young said in an interview.
Since the day Buchenwald was liberated, meanings of the place — and interpretations of what happened there — have shifted under changing regimes.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald said its demands from the memorial site were faithful to the Oath of Buchenwald, a pledge made by 21,000 survivors of the camp on April 19, 1945. That day, the freed inmates marched onto the roll call square and surrounded Buchenwald’s first memorial monument, a wooden obelisk made in the camp’s wood shop. They read a memorial address in Russian, Polish, German, French, Czech and English, ending with the jointly spoken oath.
“We will only give up the fight when the last guilty has been judged by the tribunal of all nations,” they said. “The absolute destruction of Nazism is our motto. The building of a new world of peace and freedom is our ideal.”
Just a few days later, the oath was revised. A new version swore to pursue the destruction of Nazism “down to its roots.” That addition had a clear meaning for communist survivors, a meaning solidified when Buchenwald came under Soviet-occupied East Germany: The “roots” of fascism were understood as capitalism and the West.
In 1958, the German Democratic Republic unveiled Buchenwald’s first state memorial, a path linking mass graves to a bell tower where the oath was inscribed.
“It was politicized during the GDR as an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-West message. Pretty much up to 1990, that’s how it was framed,” said Niven.
Buchenwald became a monument to the communist-led struggle and ultimate victory over fascism, a site symbolizing solidarity across national boundaries. For decades, wide gaps remained in this history, such as the Hitler-Stalin pact and the fate of Jewish inmates.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, Buchenwald was reconceptualized. In 1991, an independent historical commission recommended an array of changes, including emphasizing the concentration camp and installing memorials for groups that had not yet been commemorated.
A memorial was also installed for the “special camp” that the Soviets set up from 1945 to 1950. The regime used this camp to intern Nazis, along with numerous perceived enemies who were not Nazis. An estimated 7,000 people who died there were buried in a forest near the camp, their graves kept a state secret. Now, Nazis are remembered among the victims in mass graves.
In the 1990s and 2000s, a new doctrine shaped Germany’s memory of the past: its special responsibility to Israel. During the process of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” or reckoning with the Nazi era, the robustness of the State of Israel became key to Germany’s rehabilitation.
“Just as the Holocaust did justify the birth of the State of Israel, in Germany’s eyes, part of the reason for the memorial is to commemorate the reason that Jews must never be attacked again — or, there must never be another genocide of Jews, in particular,” said Young.
Still, the Oath of Buchenwald has been invoked throughout the 2000s with a globalized urgency. During the 70th anniversary of liberation in 2015, survivor Bertrand Herz pleaded with young people around the world to defend human rights and fight racism. As long as repression persisted in the world, he said, the oath would not be fulfilled.
That commemoration came in the midst of terrorist attacks on Jews in Europe and a Syrian refugee crisis that changed the makeup of Germany. Beside Herz, the politician Martin Schulz said Buchenwald’s victims left behind a moral compass to navigate these challenges. Their memory obligated Europe to “fight the return of demons that we thought were overcome but which still show their ugly face — racism, anti-Semitism, ultra-nationalism and intolerance,” said Schulz.
Kufiyas in Buchenwald is not the only group to object to the Buchenwald memorial in recent years. Thuringia, the state housing the memorial, is a stronghold for the far-right Alternative for Germany party. The party received 38.6% of the vote there in last year’s federal elections, more than in any other German state.
The leader of the AfD in Thuringia, Bjoern Hoecke, has urged Germany to break with its culture of repentance for Nazism. He has called Berlin’s Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame.” In 2021, AfD election posters in the Buchenwald parking lot advertised “courage to speak the truth.” The site has seen attacks from graffiti of swastikas to people cutting down trees planted in memory of survivors.
The AfD’s takeover of Thuringia in 2024 prompted an outcry from the International Committee Buchenwald-Dora and Kommados, founded in 1952 to preserve the memory of Buchenwald’s resistance.
“The ICBD thanks all the people in politics and civil society who fought fiercely in Thuringia and Saxony to defend our values — the values of the Buchenwald Oath,” the group said.
The AfD, predicted to surge in the region in September’s election, has presented an agenda to overhaul German life toward social conservatism and drive out immigrants and refugees.
Borchardt, the Kufiyas in Buchenwald organizer, said the memorial recently published a handout that placed images of a keffiyeh, a watermelon (a symbol of Palestinian solidarity) and the words “ceasefire now” next to swastikas, all shown as examples of antisemitism. She repudiated that comparison.
For her, there is no confusion in the Oath of Buchenwald, which she said “stands for itself.”
“It’s not very hard to understand that the current genocide happening in Palestine, the imprisonment of political prisoners — who are imprisoned, lots of them, without any court hearing or right to defend themselves — that this was probably meant by the Oath of Buchenwald, too,” said Borchardt.
The post Pro-Palestinian activists are banned from Buchenwald, where survivors vowed to fight for peace appeared first on The Forward.
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How wrong I was about the young Ukrainian with the Chabad yarmulke
מײַן מאַמע, עליה השלום, פֿלעגט מיר זאָגן, אַז בעסער איז טראַכטן גוטס וועגן אַ שלעכטן מענטשן, איידער שלעכטס — וועגן אַ גוטן.
ניט איין מאָל אין פֿאַרלויף פֿון מײַן לעבן האָב איך זיך אָנגעמאַכט צרות און צומאָל זיך צעקלאַפּט ביז בלוט מײַן אייגענעם פּרצוף, זיך באַמיִענדיק פֿאָלגן די דאָזיקע עצה. עס זײַנען געווען פֿאַלן, ווען איך בין אָפּגעטראָטן פֿון דעם דאָזיקן פּרינציפּ, און איך באַדויער דאָס טאַקע.
הײַנט אַרבעט איך ווי אַ פֿאָרשטייער פֿון דער ייִדישער אַגענץ אין מאָלדאָווע מיט ייִדישע — און צומאָל מיט ניט־ייִדישע — פּליטים פֿון אוקראַיִנע. מײַן אויפֿגאַבע איז פֿאַרשנעלערן דעם פּראָצעס פֿון זייער אַרויספֿאָרן קיין ישׂראל. הונדערטער פּנימער, הונדערטער גורלות. כּמעט אויסשליסלעך — פֿרויען מיט קינדער און זקנים. ניט זעלטן זקנים, וועלכע האָבן איבערגעלעבט אַלס קינדער די צווייטע וועלט־מלחמה. צו מאָל — קינדער, וועלכע שרעקן זיך פֿון דעם, וואָס איך רעד אויף רוסיש מיט אַ מאָסקווער אויסשפּראַך. אַזוי רעדן דאָך רוסישע מערדער.
דאָס גאַנצע באַזיניקטע לעבן מײַנס בין איך געווען אַ ייִדישער נאַציאָנאַליסט און איך בלײַב אַזאַ ביז איצט. איך בין ניט קיין „רוסישער“ ייִד, הגם איך בין געבוירן געוואָרן אין מאָסקווע און רעד רוסיש, ווי אַ מאָסקווער גוי. איך בין ניט קיין „אוקראַיִנישער“ ייִד, הגם מײַן מאַמע איז געבוירן געוואָרן אין פּיריאַטין אין דער פּאָלטאַווער געגנט, און איך רעד גאַנץ נישקשה אוקראַיִניש.
איך בין אַ ייִדישער ייִד. מײַן היימלאַנד אינעם סאַמע טיפֿסטן זין פֿונעם וואָרט „היים“ איז ישׂראל, און קיין שום בירגערשאַפֿט, חוץ דער ישׂראלדיקער, האָב איך ניט און דאַרף איך ניט. אָבער דאָ און איצט זע איך אַן אַבסאָלוט בייז און אַן אַבסאָלוט גוטס, וועלכע מעקן אָפּ גרענעצן פֿון נאַציאָנאַליטעטן און צווינגען זיך צו דערמאָנען, אַז מיר אַלע זײַנען בני־אָדם, אַז מיר זײַנען געבוירן געוואָרן מענטשן און מוזן שטרעבן צו בלײַבן מענטשן. טאַקע יענץ, וואָס אויף ייִדיש רופֿט מען „אַ מענטש“.
זיך אומקערנדיק צום אָנהייב, צו מײַן מאַמעס עצה — שלאָג איך זיך על־חטא: נעכטן אין איינעם פֿון די פּונקטן אין אוקראַיִנע, וווּ עס זײַנען צײַטווײַליק אײַנגעאָרדנט די ייִדישע פּליטים, האָב איך זיך פֿאַרנומען מיט מײַן אַרבעט. צו מיר איז געווען אַ גאַנץ גרויסע ריי. צווישן די, וואָס האָבן געוואַרט אין דער ריי, האָט זיך געוואָרפֿן אין די אויגן אַ יוגנטלעכער מיט אַ חב״דישער יאַרמלקע. „מסתּמא אַ דעזערטיר, וואָס אַנטלויפֿט פֿון מאָביליזאַציע אין דער אוקראַיִנישער אַרמיי,“ האָב איך אַ טראַכט געטאָן און דערפֿילט אַן אַנטיפּאַטיע צו אים.
ניט לאַנג צוריק האָב איך באַזוכט מערבֿ־אוקראַיִנע און געטראָפֿן דאָרט עטלעכע מאַנצבילן — אוקראַיִנישע בירגער, בתוכם ייִדן, וועלכע האָבן זיך באַמיט אויסמײַדן מאָביליזאַציע אין דער אוקראַיִנישער אַרמיי, געגנבֿעט די גרענעץ צווישן אוקראַיִנע און מאָלדאָווע. איך האָב געמיינט, אַז דער דאָזיקער יונגער חב״דניק איז איינער פֿון יענע, וואָס האָבן באַוויזן זיך אַרויסצושמוגלען.
אָבער איך האָב אַ טעות געהאַט. ס׳האָט זיך אַרויסגעוויזן, אַז ער איז בכלל אַ רוסלענדישער בירגער פֿון איינער פֿון די צוויי הויפּטשטעט. צופֿעליק איז ער געווען צוליב זײַנע חב״דישע ענינים אין אוקראַיִנע, אין קיִעוו, ווען עס האָט זיך אָנגעהויבן די מלחמה. דער בחור איז געבליבן אַלס וואָלונטיר אין דער אָרטיקער ייִדישער קהילה. במשך פֿון אַ חודש האָט ער געהאָלפֿן אַרויספֿירן ייִדישע פּליטים פֿון דער שטאָט דער באַשאָסענער מיט ראַקעטן, אין בײַשטעט פֿון וועלכער ס׳איז שוין אַרײַן דאָס רוסישע מיליטער. בלויז איצט, ווען די באַוואָפֿנטע כּוחות פֿון אוקראַיִנע הייבן אָן איבערצוגיין אין דער קיִעווער געגנט צו אַ קאָנטער־אָנגריף, איז ער אַוועקגעפֿאָרן פֿון אוקראַיִנע קיין מאָלדאָווע כּדי עולה זײַן קיין ישׂראל.
הײַנט וועט דער דאָזיקר יונגער חב״דניק מיט גאָטס הילף זײַן אין ישׂראל.
זײַ מיר מוחל, בחור אין דער חב״דישער יאַרמלקע. איך זאָג צו צו האַלטן זיך אין דער צוקונפֿט שטרענגער בײַ דער עצה פֿון מײַן מאַמען: בעסער איז טראַכטן גוטס וועגן אַ שלעכטן מענטשן, איידער שלעכטס — וועגן אַ גוטן.
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Teenager eulogizes slain father who saved his life in West Bank terror attack just before Yom Kippur
(JTA) — Standing at his father’s grave after Yom Kippur 16-year-old Yoav Shukron thanked him for the warning that saved his life a day earlier, when a Palestinian gunman opened fire on the two of them at a West Bank spring.
“Dad, I want to say thank you for 16 years together. Thank you for giving me life,” Yoav said on Monday night as his father, Netanel Shukron, 48, was laid to rest in the West Bank settlement of Alei Zahav.
“Thank you for shouting out to me during the attack, when the terrorist came in. I don’t remember what you said to me, and I ran,” he added, in remarks carried by Channel 12 news.
Yoav had accompanied his father to the Ein Riya spring near the settlement of Neve Tzuf on Sunday to immerse ahead of Yom Kippur when the attack took place.
Yoav escaped unharmed. Shukron, a father of six, was critically wounded and later pronounced dead at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva.
Hundreds of relatives, friends and residents attended the funeral, held after the Yom Kippur fast ended.
“Nati was the most involved father in the world,” his wife, Merav Shukron, said.
Reflecting on their 18-year marriage, she said, “We came from different families, but that didn’t stop us from being soulmates. Nati, our family is perfect, everything was perfect.”
The couple had six children, ages 4 to 16. Shukron worked as an information systems analyst at Hachshara Insurance Company, while Merav Shukron is a lecturer at Ariel University.
Merav said the family had been due to travel abroad the following week and that her husband had carefully planned the trip around spending time together, including packing a sukkah and food for the holiday.
According to the Israeli military’s preliminary investigation, the Palestinian attacker drove to the spring and opened fire. An Israeli military tracker who was nearby in an armored vehicle returned fire and wounded the gunman, preventing him from continuing the attack.
The attacker fled and was located several hours later receiving treatment at a hospital near Ramallah, where soldiers from the elite Duvdevan unit arrested him.
Israeli security officials identified the suspected attacker as Qadri Samara, a resident of the Palestinian town of Biddu who is affiliated with the Hamas terror group and was previously known to Israeli security forces, according to Channel 13. Investigators said he had visited the spring the previous day and determined that large numbers of people would be there to immerse in its waters ahead of Yom Kippur, a practice observed by some Jews before the fast.
In the aftermath of the attack, Israeli troops carried out a large operation in Biddu, mapping Samara’s home ahead of its possible demolition, searching about 100 locations and questioning about 90 suspects. The military also reinforced its forces across the West Bank, including by deploying the elite Egoz unit to the area.
About an hour after the shooting, soldiers thwarted a separate attempted car-ramming attack at the Ganim military post in the northern West Bank. One attacker was killed and a second was arrested, Channel 13 reported, adding that no soldiers were wounded.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on X, “No terrorist is immune, neither are those who assist them; we will settle scores with all of them – in Gaza, in Lebanon, and in Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical term for the West Bank.
President Isaac Herzog noted that the attack came “on the eve of Yom Kippur, as the people of Israel gather for the holy day.”
“Terror will not break us or shake our spirit,” he said. “We will stand against it together, united, determined and full of faith.”
Shukron’s killing has also become the first case in which Israeli officials are considering applying a death penalty law approved by the Knesset in March, according to the KAN public broadcaster.
The law, long championed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his far-right Otzma Yehudit party, makes death the default sentence for non-Israelis convicted in Israeli military courts of carrying out deadly nationalist attacks, while allowing judges to impose life imprisonment in “special circumstances.” It passed the Knesset 62-48 and immediately drew a High Court challenge.
Ben-Gvir raised the possibility of applying the law to Samara during a security meeting before Yom Kippur, arguing that the case was the first to meet the law’s criteria. Netanyahu did not rule out the proposal and asked IDF representatives for their position on applying the law, which they said they saw no impediment to doing, according to KAN, though the report noted that the military advocate general was not present at the meeting. The issue is expected to be discussed again in a smaller cabinet forum with the IDF’s legal chief present, the report said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Herzog’s Yom Kippur pardon of soldier crystallizes choice for Israeli voters
On the eve of Yom Kippur, President Isaac Herzog pardoned Elor Azaria, an Israeli soldier convicted of manslaughter for shooting a wounded Palestinian attacker in the head in Hebron a decade ago.
Azaria served nine months of an 18-month sentence and was released in 2018. His conviction remained on his record, with the ordinary process leaving it in place until 2032, complicating life for the now 30-year-old.
To ease that burden, Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, in July asked Israeli President Isaac Herzog, to grant Azaria clemency, expunging the record.
This Herzog did on the eve of Yom Kippur. There is a coherent argument for that decision. Azaria was a young soldier when the shooting occurred, he served his sentence, and a criminal record can continue to impose practical obstacles on civilian life long after a formal prison sentence has ended. Herzog invoked reconciliation and the possibility of a new beginning, as well as the consequences Azaria had already endured.
But the army did not agree. Current military chief Eyal Zamir and other senior officers opposed the request, arguing that Azaria had never expressed genuine remorse.
The pardon has now returned the Azaria affair to the center of Israeli politics at a particularly consequential moment.
Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the military chief at the time who publicly pushed for prosecution, is now the main political leader in the opposition and its leading candidate for prime minister. Netanyahu, the prime minister at the time who called for Azaria’s pardon, is still leading the other side of Israel’s great political argument. After the Oct. 27 election, Herzog will consult the elected factions and probably assign the task of forming a government to one of them, based on who he believes has the best chance.
If the numbers leave neither Eisenkot nor Netanyahu with a clear path to a majority of 61, Herzog could face a genuinely consequential exercise of presidential judgment between the two men who stand on opposite sides of the Azaria case – which he himself has turned into an election issue.
The roots of that divide go back to March 24, 2016, when Israeli soldier Azaria aimed his rifle at Abdel Fattah al-Sharif and pulled the trigger. Al-Sharif had attacked Israeli soldiers with a knife and was shot and incapacitated. Minutes later, as he lay on the ground, Azaria nonchalantly raised his rifle and fired, from a few meters away. Al-Sharif was clearly not threatening the numerous soldiers milling around.
The shooting was captured on video, and what might otherwise have remained a disputed incident became one of the defining political arguments in Israel. It was a moment when Israeli politics – notoriously complex and sometimes inscrutable even to insiders – briefly came into focus: the fault line is whether you think this is OK.
The military treated the shooting as a serious criminal matter,. Eisenkot’s position, which earned vilification from the political right, was that a soldier could use lethal force against a genuine threat but could not simply kill a captive. The case became a test of whether the IDF’s rules meant anything when enforcing them was unpopular.
Netanyahu, who then as now was prime minister, is a man of sharp political instincts. During the controversy he called Azaria’s father, Charlie, offering sympathy. The eventual conviction was for manslaughter. After Azaria’s conviction, Netanyahu openly went all the way to politicize the case, calling for Azaria to receive a pardon.
The difference was unmistakable. Eisenkot saw the case through both the institutional obligations of the army and morality; he still believed in the old Zionist notion of the IDF as the world’s most ethical military. Netanyahu saw the political benefit in amplifying and harnessing the emotional identification of many frightened people with the soldier.
Israeli society was changing, the inflection point being the Second Intifada – a campaign of barbaric suicide bombings against civilians that was launched between 2000 and 2004, even as Israel was offering Palestinians statehood on the vast majority of the West Bank and Gaza. In 2005 Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza, uprooting thousands of settlers, resulting in Hamas jihadists taking over and years of rocket fire. The 2010s saw more killings.
After so many disappointments and so much bloodshed, many Israelis had just given up on the Palestinians (and to be fair, the feeling was mutual, largely because of the continuing occupation and the constant expansion of West Bank settlements). A significant part of the public had become indifferent at best to the idea that a soldier confronting a terrorist should be constrained by rules that might prevent him from firing. Netanyahu was either riding the tiger or goading it on, and perhaps both at the same time.
A decade later, the institutional divide exposed by the case remains remarkably intact. The current military leadership’s opposition to the pardon places today’s IDF, at least on this issue, in the same institutional tradition that Eisenkot represented in 2016: the conviction that the army’s rules must survive the political passions surrounding a particular soldier.
On the baseline level, this sad affair is about where self-defense ends and vengeance begins, and what to do when many citizens no longer care. But on a higher level, it encapsulates a contradiction from the earliest days of Zionism. The founders wanted two things at once: to turn the Jews, via national sovereignty, into “a people like all others”; and to make of their state “a light unto the nations.” Both sound good, yet one must choose.
The bullet that Azaria fired in Hebron helped crystallize that choice, which maps neatly into the political one between Eisenkot and Netanyahu. In placing his own signature on the final page of the Azaria affair, Herzog ensured it will be a highlight of the campaign, and of the legacy of both Eisenkot and Netanyahu.
It is no coincidence that the same person advocating for a man many consider a murderer is also feverishly machinating to dismantle the foundations of liberal democracy in Israel, while on trial for corruption. For Netanyahu, the ship of old-time Zionist mythology has sailed, and he’s not aiming to cast any light unto the nations. Eisenkot, essentially, still is.
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