I don't understand Israel's "ultra-religious" mentality. According to several reports, 100 yeshiva boys celebrated Holocaust Remembrance Day with picnics in the park.
What causes me to wander is that the Shoah - the Holocaust - wiped out most of Europe's Jews (and nearly extinguished the Roma) while murdering the disabled and political dissidents.
Most of Israel's haredi are relatives of the people the Germans - with help from their Czech, French, Hungarian, and Polish friends - slaughtered. To be fair, the Germans, et al, didn't care if a Jew spoke Yiddish, wore payot and dressed as a Polish pan or spoke high German and dressed in the latest style - all were destined for the "Final Solution."
I understand why the haredim refuse to celebrate Israel Independence Day; like the Moslem states that surround Israel (save for Egypt and Jordan), the haredim don't acknowledge the Jewish state's existence. Only the messiah can restore political Israel and then only as a theocratic state, according to the denizens of Bene Brak, Mea Sharim and similar haredi neighborhoods.
But it's one thing to ignore an Israeli national holiday; it's something else altogether to make an effort to insult others as the yeshiva boys did in Jerusalem and - foolishly - in Bet Shean. Bet Shean is about 90 percent North African - Jews from Morocco, Algiers, Libya. These people take the memorial day seriously.
I admit that in the U.S., many - perhaps most - Americans tend to take advantage of Memorial Day and Veterans Day for picnics and frivolous activities. But while Americans died for the flag - and too many times for someone else's flag - we didn't lose millions to people whose sole raison d'etre was wiping out an entire population.
Roughly 12 million civilians died at the hands of the Germans and their friends; of that total, at least six million were Jews. Jews and Roma (Gypsies) were murdered simply because they were Jews or Roma.
So I am bewildered by the Ashkenazi haredim who take the occasion to thumb their noses at their fellow Jews who also lost people in the Shoah. I would be equally stunned to hear that Shas' haredim joined them at the picnics, for Mizrahi Jews also died at the German's hands or at the hands of the German's Muslim allies.
Bet Shean is an interesting place - most of my relatives are there - in that even though Israel treated new immigrants from North Africa poorly, the general population is proud to be Israeli.
According to the Times of Israel article, “Remembrance Day is your event, not ours,” one ultra-Orthodox man said. “If you keep the Sabbath then we will mark your events.” Another explained that nonreligious people often have barbecues on Saturdays which, for observant Jews, is a forbidden activity.
