The trouble with Harry

Keep your eye on the outrage.

When things like this happen, we tend not to do that.

We focus only on the action and then, as if by reflex, have our same old reactions.

Big mistake. One it's understandable we've been making, but one it's time we stopped making.

I speak of the brouhaha resulting from the decision by England's Prince Harry to wear a swastika armband to a costume party.

This is the kind of story I hate, not so much because of what the story is but because of what such stories do to the Jews.

What it does to the Jews is scratch our itch to feel that nothing has changed, that everybody hates us, that the next Holocaust is just around the corner.

This story feeds into all that very big time, involving as it does not a marginal nut case, but the person third in line to the British Crown. If he could do such a thing, well, then just imagine how many closet Nazis there are in the world.

First of all, baloney. Harry is silly, not a Nazi. He's a young kid who has led an isolated, sheltered and pampered life that is unlike any led by any but a literal handful of others. The day he was born, his life's work was to be there should his father and older brother die.

Add the very human fact that he lost his mother at a very young age, in such a public way, and you pretty much have to give him a pass for almost anything he does at anytime.

Beyond that, I do not for a minute believe this in any way indicates that he hates Jews, is indifferent to our suffering in the Holocaust or supports Nazi ideals.

He did it because he likes to cause a stir, to be a bad boy, to act out and because he's absorbed enough of history and life to know anything dealing with the Nazis evokes quite the uproar.

That's the first thing we need to keep in mind. Not every seemingly anti-Semitic action is, in fact, anti-Semitic.

The next, and more important thing, to remember is to listen to the outrage. Everyone condemned what Harry did, far and wide, loud and clear. Including, indeed mostly, non-Jews. Nobody took it lightly, nobody thought it funny, nobody let it go, nobody was quiet about it.

It is instructive to note that just a week after the Harry flap, virtually every country in Europe held an official day of Holocaust commemoration, a day to atone for their part in the Holocaust, a day for remembering the victims, for reminding the world.

Joseph Aaron - Chicago Jewish News

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