While many see Israel as a fact, this tiny democracy in the Middle East faces innumerable challenges on a daily basis. Yesterday, in light of the commemoration of the Holocaust day, people contemplated on the horrors of the past, the loss of neighbors, friends and family and one cannot help but to wonder: did humanity learn the unavoidable lessons or it might happen again?
A solemn day was commemorated yesterday all over Israel and in many Jewish communities around the globe, a day of deep sadness and common sense of loss for the over 6,000,000 of Jews, among them 1,500,000 children, murdered and starved to death by the Nazi regime.
A general siren was heard all over Israel to signal the beginning of this special day and people all over the country stood in complete silence for 2 minutes, in sign of respect for those that lost their lives in that turbulent era, seven decades ago.
While Israel is today a very strong and dynamic country, one cannot disregard that despite the many decades that passed since the tragic events of WWII, the threats to the small Jewish nation are many and from multiple sources. Starting from Gaza in the south, replenishing their arsenal of rockets and mortars, to the terrorist groups running wild in the Sinai desert and harassing both Egypt and Israel. Hezbollah in the North with tens of thousands of Iranian made rockets and a heavy suspicion of tunnels dug into Israel's territory and from Syria, Isis and other terrorist groups trying to drag Israel into their conflict with Assad regime and their Iranian collaborators.
To top all these threats, the Iranian nuclear program which is currently negotiated by the US and became a serious reason for concern for the Israeli Government.
Although Israel is not a direct result of the Holocaust, the process was on its way long before Hitler raised to power, the Holocaust only emphasized the need for a safe haven to the Jewish people, a place of their own where they can be as any other normal independent nation and the natural place could be no other than their ancestral home in Israel, after all, Jewish people origin from Judea (modern Israel).
The big question that was often asked after the WWII was if another Holocaust is possible? In the past, all the people around the world would have said that another massacre of such magnitude can never happen again, the super powers will not allow such thing, the UN also will not accept anything even close to that. But it looks that we are all wrong, we fooled ourselves into believing that in our age and our civilization such things cannot happen.
The policy of non-intervention adopted by the US together with the aftermath of the "Arab Spring" has created the scenario for the rampage of Isis and their murderous deeds. Today Syria is the mass grave of over 300,000 victims of a conflict that very little was done to stop it and now we are witnessing a civil War in Yemen in which other countries (Iran & Saudi Arabia) are taking part as well.
We all would like to say that we learned anything from history and massacres of epic magnitudes are a thing of the past but events in recent years lead us to thing that after all, the necessary lessons were not learned and we are perhaps compelled to repeat the same mistakes because after all, as George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".
