Israel's leadership gathered at Yad Vashem Sunday night at the state ceremony in honor of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Monday morning, as every year, a siren will be sounded across the nation, calling for two minutes of silence in memory of the victims.

This year, there is a special emphasis on the few Holocaust survivors still living. Echoing this, is the traditional emphasis of the importance of the Jewish nation to fight against racism, and survive.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a keynote speaker at the ceremony, warned of those who "had not yet learned the lesson the Holocaust. Many gather at respectable academic institutions, with hatred of Israel blinding them."

"Most of the world population is aware of the Holocaust and aware of the evil agenda of Holocaust deniers," he said.

"They withhold from the Jewish people the right to a sovereign state. They are the first to find an excuse for any atrocity committed against Israeli civilians and the loudest in censuring defensive operations of the State of Israel."...

According to a growing number of academics and political extremists, the Jews have too much power in America.

This backlash against the so-called "Israel Lobby" has predictably caused many to wonder whether the assertive voice of contemporary Jewish political activism is too loud, too brash and, most of all, too pushy in making its case.

Those who wonder what the world would be like if only those pushy Jews listened to their critics need not engage in science fiction. All you need is a history lesson about how American Jewish organizations and leaders -- the predecessors of the ones that are today considered the take-no-prisoners cornerstone of "the lobby" -- acted during the Holocaust. And to do that, a visit to an off-Broadway theater this month will do nicely.

In Bernard Weinraub's new play "The Accomplices" at the New Group's Acorn Theater on Manhattan's 42nd Street, the eminent Rabbi Stephen Wise is confronted by an obnoxious young foreigner. The young man who goes by the name of Peter Bergson is frustrated by the unwillingness of the most influential American Jew of his era to use his power to speak up to save European Jews slated for death by Hitler's Nazis...