Purim Costumes Go Over The Top, Implicate Historical Blindness

"Besides the familiar Queen Esther and Haman costumes worn for Purim, children have been seen around the country wearing more shocking outfits ? including Palestinian suicide bombers and even concentration camp inmates. A boy from the Gush Katif settlement of Neveh Dekalim was caught by photographers dressed head-to-toe as a suicide bomber, with everything down to a mock bomb belt and green Hamas headband. In response, a 25-year-old survivor of Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda bombing in 1998, told The Jerusalem Post, "It doesn't hurt me, I am not personally offended, but I understand that people who have been through the same thing I did would feel differently, and be more sensitive about it." "People should take into consideration that they will be offending some people." he said, "Maybe the fact that they are able to dress up as suicide bombers and make light of the situation is not such a terrible thing." A yeshiva student who had spent time studying in Gush Katif saw this, however, as "a terrible thing." "By dressing up as a suicide bomber you are making it a joke, giving it legitimacy and turning it into fact that you have to accept," he said. "If we accept it... it will result in further attacks. By making a joke out of it... you are devaluing the lives taken by those same bombers." Other revelers obviously had learned nothing from the recent incident involving the UK's Prince Harry, who wore a Nazi uniform to a party.

Two teenagers were seen at a party in Jerusalem on Tuesday night, wearing concentration camp inmate uniforms, yellow armbands with the star of David and the word Jew, and yellow stars of David on their chest. "I think the kids didn't understand what they were doing," another youngster at the party said. "They obviously don't know much about the Holocaust, not like me, who did lose relatives; it was very sad." Fearing Palestinian terror organizations will launch attacks during the Purim holiday beginning on Thursday night, the police are maintaining a heightened state of alert until Sunday..."

Source: Eliana Schonwald and Yaakov Katz. Purim costumes go over the top. Jerusalem Post (23/24 March 2005) [FullText]