When do we stop sitting shiva for the Holocaust? by Rita Corriel, The Electronic Intifada, 6 November 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9082.shtml

When do we stop sitting shiva for the Holocaust?
Rita Corriel, The Electronic Intifada, 6 November 2007

A young Palestinian waits for Israeli soldiers to check his ID at a flying checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron, October 2007. (Mamoun Wazwaz/MaanImages)

I marched and lobbied in DC last June to call for an end to forty years of Israeli occupation and the US policies that support it. The sign I carried posed a single question. It is one that urgently begs to be addressed, debated and answered. I believe it holds significant implications, not only for Jews, but for the entire Middle East. "When do we stop sitting shiva for the Holocaust?"

Shiva is the traditional seven-day period of mourning which follows a Jewish funeral. It takes place in the home of the closest surviving relative, because this is where the spirit of the recently departed is traditionally believed to be present. So where in the world were we as a people, go to sit shiva for the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust? It seems that the state of Israel was destined to become the designated "shiva house" for the Holocaust. And based upon a kind of literalistic biblical perspective, it would appear to make a certain intuitive sense. It could serve as the spiritual and ancestral home for those who died in the death camps in Europe. It may even be seen by many as G-d's compensation for "allowing" the Holocaust to happen, a kind of divine reconciliation.

However, this formal period of mourning is only the first step in the process of healing and growth. So why haven't we moved on? Why has the "shiva house" become a living, breathing war machine, fueled on self-destructive fear and violence? Why the dehumanizing oppression of a people who did not even participate in the Jewish genocide? How can this "House of Israel" continually try to justify crimes against humanity while still claiming victimhood? Why does it expect the rest of the world to feel perpetual empathy, when it refuses to hear the cries of anguish and outrage echoing from within its own walls and throughout the planet?

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