This evening, Jews in Israel and around the world will mark Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance of the Holocaust. For most, it will be a moment of mourning as well as an occasion to ponder the lessons of history and to ask whether humanity has learned anything in the 67 years since the end of the Second World War. But for some on the left, the Holocaust has become a political liability that must be drained of all relevance to the contemporary world.
That’s the gist of today’s editorial in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that demands that “Netanyahu stop hiding behind Holocaust warnings.” Haaretz, which articulates the opinion of the minority of Israelis who espouse the views of the hard left about the conflict with the Palestinians as well as the potential confrontation with Iran, has come to negatively view any attempt to ground the country’s security policies in the historical experience of the Jewish people. Thus, for them it’s not merely enough to chide the prime minister for what they wrongly believe is the promiscuous use of Holocaust analogies. Instead, their goal, as well as that of others who pay lip service to the idea of proper commemoration of the Six Million who died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, is to strand the event in history. Doing so serves their immediate political purpose but, in fact, confounds the entire concept of remembrance of the Holocaust.
This is a familiar theme from the left, which in recent years has come to view mentions of the Holocaust as a dodge that has allowed Israel to avoid coming to grips with the tough issues of war and peace as well as its social cohesion. But it’s not Netanyahu and others who are in the wrong; it is those who wish to isolate the destruction of European Jewry in history and to avoid drawing conclusions from it who are profoundly misguided.
Though the Holocaust has universal significance, its particular meaning relates to what happens when Jews are rendered powerless in the face of powerful foes bent on their destruction. While there are those who wish to discuss it only in the most general terms about bias, the Holocaust was a specific event that happened to a people who had been demonized for 2,000 years and lacked the ability to adequately defend themselves.
Netanyahu is not injecting a political agenda into commemoration of this tragedy. It is actually those who wish to ban mentions of Iran’s nuclear program, the genocidal intent of Hamas and other Islamist terrorists as well as the rising tide of European anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism from the discussion of the Shoah who are distorting the debate.
The notion that Israelis or American Jews are so distracted by fears rooted in the Holocaust that they have ignored other problems or exaggerated the present threats to Jewish existence is rooted in a foolish assumption that Islamist forces who speak of their desire to eradicate Israel don’t mean what they say. Netanyahu isn’t, as Haaretz charges, irresponsibly “feeding the fear” of a second Holocaust to the detriment of his country. He is merely acknowledging the reality that Jewish history has the ability to inform our understanding of today’s conflicts, and that we must act on the conclusions we must draw from the past.
Every slur or example of hate speech is not a potential Holocaust. But the efforts of a powerful Islamist state to obtain nuclear weapons that might be used to make good on its pledge to eradicate Israel is as much of an existential threat as that of the Nazis. That doesn’t mean that Iran is Germany or that Khamenei or Ahmadinejad is Hitler, but the analogy doesn’t have to be perfect to make sense. The same applies to those Islamist terrorists, often funded by Iran, who have similar hopes about cleansing the Middle East of the one Jewish state.
What we must understand is that any commemoration of the Holocaust that does not speak of the need to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons or of preserving Israel’s security against the threat of Palestinian terrorism is not worthy of the name. Far from there being too much talk about Iran when discussing the Holocaust, there is not enough. Though today’s situation is not akin to that of 1939 when there was no Jewish state ready to defend itself or an America that despite the ambivalence of its president is united in support of Israel, the peril is nonetheless real.
The mere recital of expressions of sorrow for the Six Million is not enough. Acts of remembrance that do not cause us to draw conclusions about the present are of little use. For all the effort and resources that have gone into the proliferation of Holocaust memorials around the United States, it must be understood that the best and only true memorial to the Shoah is to be found in the creation and the survival of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people itself. Those who weep today about the fate of the Six Million but say nothing about the possibility that the West will not act to stop Iran or seek to discourage Israel from defending its people have learned nothing.
Haarets wants to take the Shoah out of its historical context, overlooking its causes –which are still with us. Among them are Judeophobia among both Christians & Muslims based on old religious teachings. nI basically agree with Jonathan, but want to correct the common misconception that the Shoah was limited to "European Jews." Jews in Arab lands & Iran were also victims of Nazis & their local sympathizers & collaborators. Jews in Libya & Tunisia were sent to death camps in Europe. Arabs murdered Jews in Baghdad in 1941.
Folks who believe that the Holocaust can safely be tucked away under the quilts of morally relative condemnations of general human cussedness out of sight out of mind in far away corners of past history might read such books as "Nazi Palestine" and other truly historical investigations into the Nazi collaborationist past of Israel's enemies. Past is prelude & etc.
"it must be understood that the best and only true memorial to the Shoah is to be found in the creation and the survival of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people itself. "–Beautifully said.
For many "Never Again" has become "Never Forget". The original active, the current passive. I think that says a lot. n nStill, I have noticed since making aliyah a real difference in Shoah remembrance in Israel versus in the US. In Israel, for most (Haaretz has little influence within the country; it's power lies with certain American Jews and many foreign diplomatic officials) the message is still "Never Again".
The Holocaust is constantly memorialized on pretext of learning from the past to prevent future atrocities. The Holocaust is not a lesson, it's a reminder of how bestial humanity can become. It cannot prevent tomorrow's massacres, since those who would commit them ignore whatever wisdom is imparted by the vast tragedy. Besides, we are killer apes, and always will be. Every means we've achieved to kill people, we've utilized. We will continue to do so. This is not an affliction of specific groups or politics, this or that religion or other fairy tale. This is in human molecular structure. n nThe Holocaust IS history. As much as it is picked over, it strands us int he past, in a history no one can do anything about.
"Lesson" and "reminder" is a distinction without a difference. I understand where you're coming from, but to say that we can learn nothing from the Holocaust is say history is useless. And to say history is useless is like saying memory is useless. n nWe shouldn't let hubris obscure the fact, proved empirically by the Holocaust, that no matter how advanced, even humane, a culture, it can almost instantly revert, given well-known triggers, to bestiality. I call that a lesson. n nKenneth Clark called the French Terror, "communal sadism". I think that's what one might call what went on in Germany, off and on, for centuries, culminating in the ultimate orgy of communal sadism, the Holocaust. (Astonishingly, the mass murders of Stalin were due to one man's sadism.) Indeed, England carried on its communal sadism towards the Jews for four hundred years, halted only at the point of Cromwell's gun. (Jew-hatred remains endemic amongst Brits.) n nInsofar as sadism is a clinical pathology, you may not be far off in attributing the Holocaust and its ilk to "human molecular structure". n nNo, we can't do anything about history. But like the results of a lab experiment, which we can't do anything about — it is what it is — we can learn from it. In this case, avoiding circumstances that lead to a like result. Just because we ignore history doesn't make it useless. It just means that we're stupid or, as you suggest, choose not to resist our bestial "molecular structure". But even then, we can't just give up on ourselves. We have to keep trying to learn from our mistakes. It's what we do, even while being thoroughly rotten.
History isn't useless. The idea that history can save us from ourselves is useless. History, like our individual experience, is an instruction manual. It can show us what can happen, it can indicate where we're going. It can warn us – a firebell in the night. But it prevents nothing. It can't. We will stifle any instruction from the past, any hesitation in our souls, if we're convinced even murder will get us what we want. It will be legitimized, argued, examined and draped in layers of justification – but it will be horror just the same. The Holocaust is indication; it's singular signpost of our monstrousness. But let's not fool ourselves that its bitter lessons scare off the worst within us. That's asking too much of it. We're capable of any outrage, and we're capable of any lie to explain it away, to sleep at night, and look our children in the eyes.
I confess that I don't know as much about the Holocaust, and the complexities of policy that, in the Nation of Israel, do best to provide for the people's security, let alone the full United States day-by day duty and response to support Israel's vigor and survival. I am not proud of my ignorance, but commit to improve my understanding. What I can say with full confidence, though, is that no one who is a Christian in truth, here in these United States, would be fulfilling their own duty, either as Christian or citizen, to turn away from conscience and conviction, in support of strong community among American Jews; to include by necessity among Jews and Christians in America, genuine brotherhood and collaborative service, support of the self-determination and strength of Israel, and advocacy for resolute leadership of our republic to effect these ends. For me, this is more than humanitarian in any sense, while not detracting from that ethic. It is also a law in my soul and respect for a shared and timeless covenant. I apologize for the limits I have on expressing these ideas adequately, but they are more in any case than mere notions. As a Christian in America, I am convinced that the destiny of my children is inextricably bound to my Lord's obvious identity as Jew, His commitment to his people regardless of any dispute of it, and the Law of the Father's intent. Thanking Jonathan S. Tobin and commenters, the article and comments are very supportive to my learning. “Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah” most certainly must also mean “Never Again” Peace and security under a Father's watchful eye, and all that it signifies.
Mr Tobin, to merely conclude that the Holocaust is a reminder of how the West will betray us is not the full lesson. We need to remember the Holocaust to remind ourselves first and foremost of how WE ourselves failed 70-80 years ago. We need to understand that with the creation of the State of Israel we have taken our history into our own hands. It is no longer the mercy of the West that we rely on, and if we fail again, G-d knows it is WE who fail in the first place, and not the West. n nJews now have the physical weapons to defend us, we also have the mental understanding of anti-Semitism, we know the power of propaganda, we see the leftist-liberal media at work… We have all the knowledge and resources to shape our future and stop a second Holocaust. We should never again make the mistake to believe that we need the world's mercy to live. We don't. We don't rely on foreign intervention any more. We are our own people. Never again is now solely in our hands.