Yad Vashem is, understandably and with much justification, an ‘untouchable holiness’ in Israel, never to be criticized or regarded negatively.  It is almost as if doing so would constitute speaking disparagingly about the awful and terrible Holocaust which of course no decent person would do.

Nonetheless, there have always been significant criticisms by many Israelis as well as Jews from other countries that Yad Vashem not only failed but adamantly refused to reach out to recognize and honor memorially the genocides of other peoples, and that it failed to play any role in projecting the understanding that genocide is a universal problem for all of mankind that has occurred, and is occurring, and tragically will continue to occur in the future to an extent that is beyond our human ability to bear.  Thus, the brilliant genocide scholar, the late R.J. Rummel, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii, who did painstaking research on the numbers of fatalities of many genocides in the 20th century, came to the conclusion that a conservative estimate of the number of human beings murdered by their fellow human beings in the century reached a total of 260 million!

Now Haaretz has published one of the rare public critiques of Yad Vashem.  Gideon Levy is a daily contributor to the paper whose work I personally do not at all like because he writes relentlessly negatively against all of the State of Israel and has never been known to acknowledge even a single aspect of the wonders and decency of so much of Israeli life along with its significant errors and weaknesses.  However, I am bringing this article by him to the attention of our web readers because I believe that along with the specific story of emotional hurt to fine people, Levy does get to the overall point accurately when he says, “Alongside its important, impressive and tireless work to document and perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust, this grand establishment is guilty of the sin of Jewish and Israeli ultra-nationalism and condescension. Yad Vashem could have become a global beacon of conscience.  It could have used its prestige around the world to behave as a universal institution rather than a provincial one, speaking out against crimes against humanity throughout the world, even when its victims aren’t Jews, crying out against the injustices done to persecuted minorities everywhere.”

Levy, Gideon (November 24, 2019). Yad Vashem Doesn’t Have the Courage to Be a Global Beacon of Conscience. Haaretz English Edition.https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-yad-vashem-doesn-t-have-the-courage-to-be-a-global-beacon-of-conscience-1.8166136