On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Hańba
27 January 2025. A day of grace and disgrace: the dignified poetry of Alexandra Troush and the sordid business of corrupt law wielded against the Israeli Prime Minister

It is 27 January 2025, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was a day intended to commemorate the victims of the Nazi "Final Solution," and chosen to mark the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army. Auschwitz, now a museum in the Polish town of Oświęcim, was the infamous Auschwitz complex of over forty concentration and extermination camps. An estimated 1.1 million people were murdered there. This particular International Holocaust Remembrance Day weighs all the heavier for Muslims trying to "finish the job" (their words) on 7 October 2023, and for this year being the eightieth anniversary of the end of Auschwitz and of WWII. How fitting it is, then, the reader will agree, that the elected leader of the state that arose in the shadow of humanity's darkest chapter expressly to protect Jews, should be at this year's annual commemorative proceedings at Auschwitz.
Except that he is not there... Two disgraces had conspired to bring about his absence.
At this very moment, as I write, the Prime Minister of Israel stands humiliated as "Defendant Number 1" in a court in Tel Aviv, in a trial specifically timed both to keep him from leading his country in war, and to load him down more heavily than he can bear. Arbitrary rule is the hallmark of totalitarianism, and the Supreme Court in Israel rules supremely and arbitrarily. How did this happen? Did no one care, or did they all just look the other way?
The charges are as spurious as in any of Stalin's courts, and the object as far from justice. Get Bibi! Till today, the Israeli Supreme Court had not yet reached the Saddam Hussain flick-of-the-wrist stage. They still have to keep up the pretence of due process, but that might soon change. Its future victims are letting it happen, because they live a democracy and they respect the law.
But if, by chance, Prime Minister Netanyahu could have attended the ceremony in Auschwitz, another court, no less arbitrary, had that covered. The same once-respected international body that had declared International Holocaust Memorial Day, also established the International Criminal Court (ICC), and that court, like the Israeli Supreme Court, arrogated unto itself limitless arbitrary powers.
Poland has the grave responsibility of custodianship over one of the most painful memories of the Jewish people. When the ICC on 21 November 2024 issued a highly-politicised arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu in service to the jihad against the Jewish people, the Polish government declared its intention to arrest the Israeli Prime Minister, should he attend the 27 January ceremony. The resulting outcry eventually caused the government to relent, but the damage had been done. Netanyahu had no intention of abasing himself in Poland. Israel's judges, though, have no problem with self-abasement.
Poetry by Alexandra Troush
Stolperstein
Gold plates on gray pavements
By almost every other door
Like stamps on a worn-out letter
Reminding me that my time here is conditional
I can’t bring myself to walk on them
Yet they’re so many, that
I find myself walking an irregular pattern
Like a drunk, struggling to balance
As to not desecrate them
I wonder who it would have been
Who would have sealed my death sentence
Were I alive back then
A neighbor, a colleague, a friend
Like the few survivors recall
Humans are funny
We came up with the word “humane”
To immortalize our virtue
Yet our species is the cruelest of all
I believe the remaining when they say
That they have seen this before
That this is exactly how it started back then
That we have to be ready at a moment’s notice
To pack our lives in a suitcase and run
It’s the same ancient evil
Masked as righteousness
Rebirthed as justice
Every single time
October 7th
A sad anniversary for our people
For us alone
We paid for it with blood and tears
The cheering crowd has no claim on this day
I make sure to leave some space
For anger too
To those who earned it
Fair and square
To former friends
Who wouldn’t let me grieve
Demanding geopolitical history lectures
At the brink of my collapse
When all I wanted was to offer a deal
To any god, and any devil
To give my soul, to get back our stolen
To former friends
Whom I welcomed in my home
With whom I shared my heart
Demanding that I prove my pain
How does one prove that the soul is bleeding?
Every cell hurts, the air feels like poison
Just look at the cracked shell housing my remains
To former friends
Who argued passionately
On a topic that they don’t understand
On a topic that I live and breathe
Claiming that I deserve to die
For being born under the Star of David
For having a lineage marbled with endurance
For speaking a language that like us, barely survived
I never imagined
That betrayal and hate came so natural to people
Who claim to be enlightened and kind
In a decade or two they’ll pretend they weren’t wrong
But none of us will forget, let alone forgive
The blood of my ancestors screams
“We told you so, we warned you
You can’t trust them
They wouldn’t come to your aid
In fact they’d be the first to turn you in”
A year and a day ago I’d brush it off as paranoia
Now I see it’s reason
But worst of all are the silent spectators
We’ve always known
That pacifism is a luxury
Only those with nothing to protect can afford
I almost envy them
This abundance of apathy
But will they still be indifferent
When the same demons arrive at their doors?