Irony

"A country is not just what it does -- it is what it tolerates." (Kurt Tucholsky, German essayist of Jewish origin)

The real irony of this quote is that it is written on one of the walls of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. While Tucholsky was writing these words, the people of Germany of the early 20th century was tolerating less and less tolerance by her government and leaders.

I also found it ironic that the central and main hall of the Yad Vashem museum complex was constructed out of concrete walls and that the path taken by the museum goers was through various cuts in those walls which are of the same width as the concrete walls of the separation Wall that is being built around Palestine (and mostly on Palestinian land). The ones who experienced terrible intolerance and imprisonment are now exacting the same intolerance and imprisonment on another people.