On trauma, its memory, its future, its repetition?

Tonight started Yom Shoah, the day of remembrance of the holocaust- a sobering day for all of us. And I mean all of us.
Roger Cohen writes an interesting piece on Israel's need for closure in today's NYT. Two quotes I can only agree with:

“The biggest risk to Israel is Israel.”

The second is from Ehud Barak:

“Every attempt to keep hold of this area as one political entity leads, necessarily, to either a non-democratic or a non-Jewish state, because if the Palestinians vote, then it is a binational state, and if they don’t vote it is an apartheid state ...”*

In an older post I wrote that "The beliefs we feed now create the world we will live in tomorrow." (See The Words of War to the Death in Palestine.) Cohen for his part concludes:

"Closure ... cannot be attained through the inflation of threats, the perpetuation of fears, or retreat into the victimhood that sees every act, however violent, as defensive."

The current tone promoting paranoia, racism and more and more radical (aka lethal) "solutions" certainly does not encourage closure.

Shalom.


Elrig
PS: As always good column by David, also related to this topic. See http://hoseyblog.blog.com/4848847/

* I would ask what about a Federation of a Jewish State and a Multicultural Palestinian State, where members of one state can be resident in the other? That would solve the "Jewish identity" issue, allow settlers to get their Palestinian green card if they so desire to live in "Judea and Samaria", and give a viable option for Jerusalem residents. (I did not make that up - I heard a former Palestinian negotiator raise that option once in public.)

Picture Source: http://college.usc.edu/vhi/images/01_26_07.jpg