DAY 2 On the official schedule, the first destination is Yad Vashem, a memorial for the victims of the Holocaust atop the Mount of Remembrance. We walk past the tree-lined Avenue of the Righteous, to honour people like Oskar Schindler who tried to save Jews, and into the history museum. Designed like a prism, with the base holding underground chambers and glass overground letting in the light, its design has been much debated. Our guide Edna Wilchfort says the over- and underground interface signifies knowing and not knowing. Others say the triangular base of the structure is half a Star of David, to show the halving of the world’s Jewish population by the Nazis. Among the displays, the most chilling: a watch that stopped ticking at 4.30, date and year unknown.
A pile of rifles outside highlights the large presence inside of men and women serving their compulsory stint with the Israeli Defence Forces. All soldiers are taken on a tour of Yad Vashem. Also, the genealogy through which the Nazis separated persons for exclusion and extermination is a reminder of the dilemma posed to Israel while operationalising the Law of Return, whereby citizenship is granted to Jews. Jewishness has traditionally passed along the maternal line, but Hitler’s oppression of anyone with ‘‘Jewish’’ ancestry compelled the government to use that same criterion for giving citizenship.
Dinner gathers to us the debate of the moment: Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, a religious settler called Yigal Amir, has petitioned the court to be allowed to attend a ritual ceremony for his still unborn child. Should he be?
We ask about another debate. How do Israelis read Jimmy Carter’s recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid? Let’s put it this way, they say, were the Israeli government to commemorate the peace deal with Anwar Sadat, Carter would not be invited to attend.

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