Israel is about to begin issuing its citizens with “smart” ID cards – plastic cards with a chip containing various biometric information, as opposed to the laminated paper cards we carried until now. The debate over the biometric database on which these cards will draw is long and ferocious, but it turns out this is only one controversial thing about the cards. Yedioth Ahronoth reported today (h/t 7th Eye) that the serial numbers of the cards (as opposed to the actual ID numbers, which will remain the same), will begin “at six million up, to commemorate the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust… the new cards will be embedded with six Stars of David, also to commemorate Holocaust victims.”
Three thoughts that come to mind:
1. Not only do we appoint ourselves to representing all living Jews of the world (and then are shocked when non-Israeli Jews are targeted by opponents of the Israeli state), but we now have appointed ourselves to represent the dead ones – not as a group but each and every one, individually. What’s next? Serial Interior Ministry numbers on Jewish headstones in cemeteries around the world?
2. It’s profoundly disrespectful to the Holocaust victims themselves, many if not most of whom weren’t Zionist and saw themselves as Jews and as nationals of their own country.
3. The same ID cards will be given to Jews and Arabs in Israel, which makes the entire shennanigan appear as if the state officially says that the 6 million murdered Jews who never set foot in Israel (certainly never acquired residency or citizenship) were here /before/ the Arab citizens who were born here.
Commemoration of the Holocaust and learning form it is tremendously important. But is the long-term plan here to turn the entire country into Yad Vashem and all citizens into walking exhibits?
Update: Here’s a scan of the original report, courtesy of Yo Gonen.
May 7, 2011
11:27 pm
ישראל עושה את הדבר הנכון
May 8, 2011
9:20 pm
What an odd post:
1. Of course Israel is the Jewish nation-state. That’s a simple matter of international law. It is neither composed of only Jews nor is formed only for Jews, any more than Armenia or Norway are in respect of the Armenian or Norwegian ethnic groups, respectively. On the other hand, in addition to its responsibilities towards all of its individual citizen, it has a responsibility towards a collectivity, that of the Jewish people. Again, this is the simple mechanics of how the Westphalian system of nation-states works — that system being, of course, the cornerstone of public international law. Which no more means that Israel automatically speaks for all Jews, than that Armenia speaks for all diaspora Armenians. So this business of “we appoint ourselves to representing all living Jews of the world” is incorrect as a purely factual matter.
2. Not sure how this is disrespectful of Jews who were neither Israeli nor wanted to be. Is Yad Vashem disrespectful of them, too? Is there a new rule whereby only the countries of which dead people were citizens may honour their memory, as doing otherwise would break the holy sanctimony of individuals’ identities being subsumed by their citizenship? This is silly, anti-diasporic nationalism.
3. But, seriously: “which makes the entire shennanigan appear as if the state officially says that the 6 million murdered Jews who never set foot in Israel (certainly never acquired residency or citizenship) were here /before/ the Arab citizens who were born here”? Of course they were were murdered before the Arab citizens who were born there. Before all those aged under 66 or so, anyway. Again, the nativist nationalist narrative of sequentialism is really quite silly.