POLL: How Do You React to Holocaust Denial, Minimization?

Holocaust Remembrance Day is Thursday in the United States.

To commemorate the same day celebrated earlier this week in Israel, a column in The Daily Beast discusses how some people believe that the Holocaust is the reason there's an independent state of Israel.

On the flip side, they then deny the Holocaust happened, minimize its importance, or use similar tactics to conclude that Israel should not exist, the column by Dr. Einat Wilf states.

But Wilf gives her opinion on why Israel does exist. And it isn't about the Holocaust. Rather, her explanation includes the following statements and more:

"Israel exists because the Jews willed it into existence," she states. "The modern state of Israel exists because the Jews who created it believed themselves to be descendants of the Israelites and Judeans who were sovereign there in ancient times and paid a high price for preserving their separate existence as a people.

" ... To portray Israel as the outcome of the Holocaust is to engage in Zionism Denial. ... It turns Israel into a colonial project of guilty Europeans rather than a national liberation project of an indigenous people reclaiming their homeland."

To read more details on the issue, go to Wilf's column on The Daily Beast.

The column points out sides to a complex issue. Share your opinions in the comments section, or vote in the poll, below.