Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Several hundred people (428 people from 40 nations, to be precise) concerned about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza organized a flotilla to bring humanitarian aid to the region. Israel illegally intercepted that flotilla and abused today’s equivalent to righteous gentiles.
The “righteous gentiles” (or “the righteous among the nations”) who helped Jews escape the Holocaust during World War II are celebrated and honored at Yad Vashem in Israel. Perhaps the most famous (because Steven Spielberg made a movie about him) was Oskar Schindler.
It is one of history’s great ironies that Israel is abusing and punishing today’s version of the righteous gentiles who sacrificed so much to help Jews being persecuted and murdered by the Nazis in World War II.
The Israeli government naturally insists the flotilla is aiding “terrorists,” pretty much the same sentiment of the Nazis who punished and often killed those who helped the Jews during the Holocaust.
It’s all so profoundly sad and tragic because “never again” (never another Holocaust) has been shown yet again to be an empty sentiment.
