ハマス攻撃は凄惨だがホロコーストではない　ヤド・バシェム館長インタビュー

【エルサレムＡＦＰ＝時事】心に傷を負った多くのイスラエル人は、イスラム組織ハマスによる１０月７日の攻撃を、ホロコースト（ユダヤ人大量虐殺）になぞらえている。だが、エルサレムにあるホロコースト記念館「ヤド・バシェム」の館長はこれを否定する。（写真は、エルサレムにあるホロコースト記念館「ヤド・バシェム」のダニー・ダヤン館長）
　ダニー・ダヤン館長はＡＦＰのインタビューに応じ、先月７日のハマスの攻撃は凄惨（せいさん）なものだが、ナチス・ドイツによる６００万人のユダヤ人殺害とは根本的に異なると強調した。
　「ハマスの集団殺害の意図、サディズム、蛮行に類似性があるとはいえ、ホロコーストとの短絡的な比較は受け入れられない」「１０月７日に行われた犯罪は、ナチスの犯罪と同レベルではあるが、ホロコーストではない」と述べた。
　パレスチナ自治区ガザ地区を実効支配するハマスは先月の襲撃で、イスラエル高官によると、少なくとも１２００人を殺害した。その大半は民間人だという。また、約２４０人が人質として拉致された。
　ダヤン氏は、ハマスによる襲撃が引き金となった憎悪や負の記憶には理解を示す。ユダヤ人にとって「連想させることは明らか」であり、「誰もがそれについて考えた」と認めた。
　だが、第２次世界大戦中の多くのユダヤ人とは異なり、今日のユダヤ人は無防備な犠牲者からは懸け離れており、イスラエルという国家が激しい反撃を行っていると指摘する。
　「われわれはホロコーストとハマスの襲撃を比較することはできない。なぜなら、われわれには今、戦うための武器があり、ハマスに代償を払わせているからだ」
　イスラエルは報復としてガザ地区への爆撃を続けており、ハマス当局によると、これまでに１万４０００人以上が死亡した。その大半が女性と子どもだ。
　イスラエルのベンヤミン・ネタニヤフ首相らは、ハマスの襲撃はユダヤ人にとってホロコースト以来の最悪の攻撃だと繰り返し批判している。
　ギラド・エルダン国連大使は先月、国連安全保障理事会での演説で「黄色い星」を着用した。
　黄色い星は、ナチス支配下の欧州諸国で起きたユダヤ人迫害の象徴となっている。エルダン氏は、安保理がハマスの「残虐行為」を糾弾するまで外さないと主張した。
　これに対しダヤン氏は、黄色い星ではなくイスラエル国旗を身に着けるよう促した。
　ダヤン氏は、国連のアントニオ・グテレス事務総長がパレスチナの長年の窮状に触れ、ハマスの攻撃は「何もないところから起きたわけではない」と発言したことの方が不快だったと話す。
　「子どもの首をはね、音楽祭で若者をレイプし、撃つことがどのような文脈において説明できるというのだろう」と語った。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/11/27-16:39）

Many traumatised Israelis have compared the bloody Hamas onslaught of October 7 to the horrors of the Holocaust, but the head of the national memorial to the genocide disagrees.
Dani Dayan, chairman of Jerusalem's Yad Vashem memorial centre, stressed that the attack, although appalling, was fundamentally different from Nazi Germany's mass murder of six million Jews.
I do not accept the simplistic comparison with the Holocaust even if there are similarities in the genocidal intentions, sadism and barbarism of Hamas, Dayan told AFP.
The crimes that took place on October 7 are on the same level as Nazi crimes, but they are not the Shoah, said the former Israeli diplomat, using another term for the Holocaust.
Dayan said he understood the revulsion and dark echoes triggered by the Hamas attack that Israeli officials say killed at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw about 240 taken hostage.
For any Jew who has heard the stories of families putting their hands over a baby's mouth to stop it from crying, the association of ideas is obvious. We have all thought about it, he said.
Aside from the scale of the events, Dayan pointed to the fact that Jews today -- unlike many during World War II -- are far from defenceless victims, and that the State of Israel has hit back hard.
We cannot compare it with the period of the Holocaust because there is an army here which is fighting and making Hamas pay the price, he said.
Israel has relentlessly bombarded the Gaza Strip and according to the besieged territory's Hamas-run government killed more than 14,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
A temporary respite was in sight as Israel and Hamas have agreed a truce of four days and an exchange of some hostages and Palestinian prisoners, although Israel has maintained it will destroy Hamas.
- 'Beheadings, rapes, shootings' -
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others have repeatedly called the Hamas attacks the worst against Jews since the Holocaust -- but Dayan warns against such parallels.
Early on, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, pinned a yellow star to his chest, insisting he would wear it with pride as long as the Security Council did not condemn the Hamas atrocities.
Some of you have learned nothing in the past 80 years, Erdan said.
Just like my grandparents, and the grandparents of millions of Jews, from now on my team and I will wear yellow stars, he said.
Dayan at the time wrote in a Hebrew-language post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that this act disgraces the victims of the Holocaust as well as the State of Israel.
The yellow star symbolises the helplessness of the Jewish people and their being at the mercy of others... Today we will fasten to our lapel a blue and white flag, not a yellow star.
Dayan said he was even more irritated by comments from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said the Hamas attacks did not happen in a vacuum, referring to the Palestinians' long plight.
I asked him what context could explain the beheading of children, rapes or shootings of young people at a music festival, Dayan said.
- 'The fear has returned' -
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, was established in 1953, five years after the creation of Israel.
Since October 7, it has cancelled educational seminars and turned some spaces into classrooms for 400 students evacuated from southern Israel.
It was necessary, said Dayan, to adapt the premises to the needs of the children displaced by the attacks or evacuated amid the Gaza war.
We removed the photos from the walls so as not to add trauma to trauma, he said.
The memorial centre itself counts some of its own staff among the victims.
Polish-born Israeli historian Alex Dancyg, 75, who worked at Yad Vashem, was last seen at the Nir Oz kibbutz and is feared to be among the hostages, as is one of the guides, Liat Atzili.
A fellow educator, Shlomo Balsam, also rejected likening October 7 to the Shoah, even as he said I hear survivors say that it takes them back to that time.
Balsam is honorary president of Aloumim, an Israeli organisation for Holocaust survivors who were hiding in France during the war.
Some members, now very old, met at Yad Vashem and discussed both their childhood memories and their fears for the hostages, and for grandchildren serving as soldiers in Gaza.
Children held hostage alone in Gaza are like us when we were abandoned alone during the war, said one octogenarian, Meira Bursztejn-Barer.
Berthe Badehi, 91, who survived the war hiding in a farmer's house, said the fear she felt at the time had returned.
This time around, she said determinedly, we will emerge victorious.