Refugee crisis: Israelis invoke Holocaust as they debate how to respond

(The Christian Science Monitor) As scenes of Middle Eastern refugees streaming along European railways were stirring Israelis’ collective memory of World War II, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled this week to Israel’s frontier with Jordan to inaugurate construction of a fence aimed at keeping potential migrants out.

The desert frontier marks the third border to be blocked by Israel since 2011 to stop illegal crossings, but it comes amid widespread soul-searching in this relatively prosperous nation about whether Israel should follow the lead of European countries and agree to allow Arab refugees to come in.    

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog triggered debate when he declared last weekend that “our people experienced with their own flesh the silence of the world and can’t remain indifferent to the murder and massacres in Syria.”