Israel is endlessly criticized by Christians and Muslims and Europeans and Americans for “not learning the lessons of the Holocaust,” and for not heeding the “never again” pledge.
They don’t seem to understand that the “lessons of the Holocaust” that *we* learned are different from the “lessons” they use to flatter themselves and, now, to denigrate us.
*We* learned that Christians may profess brotherly love and meekness, but that won’t stop them from murdering us and our children so they can steal our wealth for themselves. And that they will feel good and righteous about themselves for doing it.
*We* learned that the Muslims need only the lightest push from their leaders to be driven to massacre their Jewish neighbors. And that they will feel good and righteous about themselves for doing it.
*We* learned that Europeans may cloak themselves in philosophy and culture, but from the lofty heights of their academies and in the soaring language of their diplomats, they will write moral justifications for our liquidation. And that they will feel good and righteous about themselves for doing it.
*We* learned that when the lights of Europe are extinguishing for the Jews, and the Americans have the chance to welcome our “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” they will slam down immigration quotas and doom us to the gas chambers. And that they will feel good and righteous about themselves for doing it.
The lessons of the Holocaust that *we* learned are that great peoples of the Earth - the Christians, the Muslims, the Europeans, and even the Americans - are insane and cruel and dishonest beyond even our worst imaginations. That we are truly alone and the only way to survive in a world populated by insane and cruel and dishonest people is to be strong enough to make it too costly for them to kill us again.
When we said “never again,” we meant “never again to us.”
We learned those lessons of the Holocaust well, and we just keep learning them.
Not all Christians criticize Israel: Christians United for Israel (https://cufi.org ) is the largest pro-Israel organization in the world, with over 10 million members.
30% of Brazil's population is now Evangelical with strong support for Israel, to the point that Lula D'Silva's approval rating dropped significantly the week after he compared Israel to the Nazis.
I am moved by their passion for Israel, more so when I see the ambivalence in many "modern" Jewish congregations.
Don't disdain or offend those who want to be allies by painting with an overly broad brush.
Of course. Not all of anyone ever does or believes anything, and that is as true for Christians as it is for Jews and for everyone else. There were righteous gentiles during the Holocaust as there are today, and as much as we appreciate them, the Holocaust’s lesson is that we would be foolish ever to rely on them to protect us from everyone else.
Much more than useful. I try never to forget that there are more Christian Zionists than there are Jews by many, many millions. Probably hundreds of millions.
I regularly ready Jewish Chronicle on line. Even in that tiny number of British Jews, it appears more than a few will sign the most radical anti Israel documents to be published in virulently Israelopbhic papers like Guardian and Independent. As in America among the anti Zionist Jewish groups they crave acceptance on the "progressive" left. maybe the reasons go deeper.
Haman (in Megilas Esther) was considered “evil” because he tried to collective annihilate the entire Jewish people, men, women and children (even purely innocents infants).
Yet just a few generations earlier it was the Jews who had been commanded to collectively annihilate Haman’s ancestors (Amalek) including all men, women and children (which the Jews obediently completed (except for Haman’s great; great . . grandfather who was granted a one night reprieve (during which his future descendants were conceived)).
So why was Haman evil? After all his goal was to treat the Jewish people exactly as they had treated his own people?
And how about Hitler, undoubtedly a descendant (and least in spirit) of Amalek and Haman? Why was he evil if he merely sought to complete the mission that Haman failed to accomplish?
Bottom line is that the Jewish victims of Hitler (and their descendants) have no greater right to march under the banner of “Never Again” then the Amalek victims of the Jews and their descendants (including Hitler himself) The banner of “Never Again’ either belongs to everyone or to no one.
As an aside, Hamas is not Amalek nor is it the Nazis. They are fighting a holy war to eliminate Jewish sovereignty over sacred Islamic lands, just as the Messianic Zionists are fighting a holy war to eliminate any risk of non Jewish sovereignty over any portion of the Jewish holy land.
If the Jews departed Palestine (or relinquished Jewish sovereignty in exchange for minority rights in a unified Islamic Caliphate) would Hamas nevertheless seek the annihilation of every Jewish man, women and child?
If you doubt this point, ask yourself the following question — Who is the “Great Satan” in the eyes of Iran and its axis of resistance? Not the Jews but the aggressive and oppressive American and European colonialists. Israel is merely their middle eastern proxy — hence the title “Little Satan.”
Biblical sources contain no evidence of the Jews ever being commanded to annihilate the descendants of Yishmael nor have the descendants of Yishmael ever sought to annihilate of Issac or Israel. Conversion or death was certainly a feature of both Muslim and Christian persecution of the Jews but no one offered conversion to the Jews of Shushan nor to the Jews of Nazi German (nor to the Amalek ancestors of Haman or Hitler).
It’s worth noting that the term “Semite” includes descendants of both Issac and Yishmael (Jews and Arabs).
Anti-Semites hate both Muslims and Jews, as we’ve seen in the post October 7th surge in both Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
Bottom line is that the Middle East conflict has nothing to do with Shushan or Nazi Germany and it’s intellectually dishonest to conflate the two to score propaganda points.
Mark is wrong. Arabs and Jews have lived happy and well coordinated lives in Spain during what is still called "The Golden Age" of about 3 centuries until the Christians drove them away and instituted the disaster known is the inquisition. The present disagreement and fighting between Arabs and Jews is based on political and not religious discord and this is a relatively recent feature in our past good relationships. We both believe in the one God (having different names, but otherwise the same). We both abstain from eating pork, celebrate a day of rest every week, and circumcise our young male descendents. From the time of Abraham we are directly related through his genes, which is why sometimes they are called our brothers.
We dont live in the Golden Age of Enlightenment, or the Golden Age of Islam, for that matter. Three hundred and Twelve hundred years ago respectively.
We dont live in those times, we live in the Twenty First Century, and many of us have lived in Twentieth Century.
So for the better part of the nighteenth century through the twentieth century and into the early part of the twenty first century , you have never ending attacks on Jews by Arabs.
The " modern" day attacks attacks started against the Jews in the 1920 time frame .
The Aleppo massacre in 1850 was one of worst massacres by Arabs was perpetrated on Christians.
So David,
I have a hockey game to go to, if you do respond, please respond with a list of ALL ATTACKS and murders against Jews, lets say starting in the Fifteen Hundreds?
If as you say, Jews and Arabs have lived together peacefully for the last Six Hundred Plus this should require little or no research on your part.
This captures well the true looniness and excuse-making of moral equivalence. It won't work. The stories of the Bible have been put to many uses. I cannot think of a less worthy example of that than this.
Just to clarify — there is zero moral equivalence between Israel’s just war in Gaza versus Hamas’ despicable slaughter of peace loving innocent Israeli civilians living cooperatively with their Gazan neighbors.
There is no moral equivalence between the Nazi’s master plan to exterminate the Jewish “race” versus our Christians and Muslims persecutors who sought to convert us to extinguish the Jewish “faith” versus the Muslim world in 1947-48 that refused to accept Jewish sovereignty over Islamic holy lands in the Middle East (which they sincerely believe is their God given inheritance as descendants of Yishmael.
True the United Nations voted by a 2/3rds majority to grant us sovereignty in Palestine. But it’s equally true that every Muslim member state voted against the proposal and the vote passed only because a supermajority of voting power was held by Christian member states that committed the worst atrocities against Jews in the past millennium (including the Holocaust).
Does it offend you that I would include non-Jews under the protective umbrella of “Never Again”?
I learned that from my parents who survived Auschwitz and lost the vast majority of their immediate family there in the Summer of 1944. I learned that from Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) which he completed in 1946 (just one year after his liberation).
I learned that from the Bible — fron the empathy that we were commanded to feel to other “foreigners” because we too were once “foreigners” in the land of Egypt.
Why was it necessary for the Bible to teach us that Joseph enslaved the Egyptians before the Egyptians enslaved the Jews?
Or to teach us that the Jews conquered the holy land from the seven nations before the Babylonians and then the Ramens conquered it from us?
Or to teach us that the Jews exterminated every man, women and child in Amalek before Haman (Amalek descendent) would to exterminate the Jews and before Hitler actually exterminated 1/3rd of European Jewry.
Not to teach us to make loony moral equivalences but to sensitize us to other victims of extermination (empathize to other who have been exterminated because you too had been persecuted in Auschwitz)
Spilling blood in God’s name is never worthy unless you are a true believer (like the Chirstian Crusaders or the Protestant/Catholic holy wars or the Shia/Sunni holy wars or the Hindu/Muslim holy wars or the holy wars in the “Promised Land” between the descendants of Yishmael (includes Hamas) and the descendants of Issac (including the Massianic Zionist settlers. Worthiness is in the eyes of the beholder.
Was it worthy in your eyes for Abraham to slaughter Issac or for the Jews to annihilate Amalek? Weren’t they also spilling blood in God’s Name?
Maybe God has nothing to do with it. But if so, on what basis do the “Chosen People” claim an eternal inheritance in the “Chosen Labd”?
I really feel for Israel, how the hell you stand strong in the face of this onslaught- I salute you. Don't care what the idiots say I stand with you and hope you prevail. It must be extremely weird to have the truth be upended to make you the bad guys, what the hell happened to the world that this is where we are. How can people really believe the rubbish that is being targeted at Israel - did we forget our own history as a civilisation that fought and died to stop this horror ever happening again. No surrender!!
All those appropriating the Holocaust in defense of the Arab and Muslim supremacist cause of Palestinianism overlook one very important fact: the Jews were not trying to destroy or even harm Germany. They were loyal citizens. The Arabs launched a jihad in 1948, and have been trying to turn that loss into a win ever since. It is a genocidal cause. It is the Arab version of lebensraum. They don’t need more land, they just want it and are willing to murder the indigenous people of the land to get it. This argument should be made now. Don’t wait until after the war.
I would not forego the endeavor, but I question how much mileage Israel would get from “a quest to reclaim the Holocaust”. Certainly, there may be a benefit when directed to those not infected with Jew hatred. But I doubt Israel’s enemies and their supporters care a whit about the past suffering of Jews.
Israel’s problems seem to have arisen from its own failure to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. I was struck by the irony of the cited Netanyahu 2020 Holocaust Remembrance Day speech stating that “[t]he Jewish people have learned the lessons of the Holocaust always to take seriously the threats of those who seek our destruction . . . .” Really? By the time of that speech, the country had watched both Hamas and Hezbollah grow from surmountable to existential threats to the State of Israel.
It seems Israel’s fundamental error in the past has been to place too much emphasis on what the “world” thinks, rather than actually eliminating “the threats of those who seek [its] destruction.” The Israeli government has apparently taken that notion to heart now, but the question is whether it is too late.
Don’t forget, the British and Americans could have bombed the rail lines in, but chose not to. They could have allowed more refugees to land, or to escape to what became Israel. They chose not to. Even after the Holocaust, with the British keeping camp survivors in new camps in Cyprus.
The British could also have pressed their Arab partners in fighting the Ottomans, and later the Nazis, to accept partition - instead the British pushed them against it and lent their generals towards the goal of ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, of the Jews in the fledgling Jewish state. Sure, the generals “resigned” without home command knowing…. Right…. Maybe they thought that the UK would be called in to save the last bit, and regain control of the Mandate via the typical British “draw lines to keep ethnic groups fighting and dependent on the UK” plan… who knows.
Meanwhile, Israel needs to drop the fantasy of global acceptance. The world, West and East, will happily feed the Jews to the crocodile, just as the did the Czech. Build many small modular liquid thorium molten salt reactors, as it doesn’t take much to cut off ocean pipelines. Get a stockpile of materials to fabricate weapons. Go for low cost options - use bullets or bolts rather than costly missiles to take down cheap rockets, regardless of increased collateral risk. And don’t be so quick to share all tech with supposed “allies”. Make sure that Israel can feed itself, regardless of what the world wants. A dependent Jew is a dead Jew - Israel needs a new declaration of true independence.
After watching the sick displays of Jew Hatred here in Montreal , after the Oct7th savagery,, I quickly came to realise that no Jew is safe, no democracy is safe.
The lefts calls for equality and justice were just a facade for hatred against everything we stand for, everything we believe in.
And I will go one step further, it is the evil within.
I stand with Israel, yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever.
I wrote on another blog that the "righteous gentiles" needs to be updated to our allies today. One example is Douglas Murray, another is my "secular gentile Zionist" friend.
During the BLM riots some proposed that "all lives matter" and this too was "racist" as it stripped the racism against black Americans of its uniqueness. So I tell Mishra and anyone else that "never again for anyone" is racist Jew Hate....meant to take away the uniqueness of the crime of the extermination of the Jews. The bombing of the WCK van, Jose Andres has all ready concluded was deliberate. I saw him interviewed on PBS Newshour and I heard his all ready tendentious comments prior to this tragic incident. To my surprise Joe Scarborough said today on his show that Oct. 7th was a war on the world's 15 million Jews....and that's what I've been saying. Holocaust museums,movies, have apparently done almost nothing by way of educating people. If kids laughed during Schinder's List I was told that they live in violent neighborhoods where life is barely valued so of course they laugh. I don't know what Jewishness means to many secular Israelis and I don't know what Zionism means to the Haredi who I see fighting the Israeli police but not for Israel against its enemies. The Jews who are anti Israel and make comparisons to between Israel and the policies of Nazi Germany have to answer to their own consciences if they have any. But in the public sphere they provide aid and comfort for those who hope for another Holocaust.
Our propaganda war against Hamas cannot be won by invoking the Holocaust but instead by the actions being taken by our heroic soldiers on the ground in Gaza to minimize collateral damage as they pursue their “just war” to eliminate Hamas as a known ongoing existential threat to the Jewish State and its people.
And also by the actions taken by Hamas to expose its own civilians as “human shields” and to use every civilian death outside the tunnels as a propaganda win for their “protectors” inside those tunnels.
The propaganda war is now entering a decisive phase and the outcome is entirely in Israel’s control. To win decisively Israel must flood the zone with humanitarian aid and safely evacuate the civilians from Rafah before completing our existential mission to destroy Hamas.
On the other hand, if Israel stand idly by as starvation claims the lives of countless civilians outside the tunnels, we will have gifted the ultimate propaganda victory to Hamas even posthumously (even if they never emerge from the tunnels other than as holy martyrs).
As a child of survivors (whose family on both sides perished in Auschwitz, I have an additional objection to invoking the Holocaust which I will express simply by way of excerpts from Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”
“From all of this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two - the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man. Both can be found everywhere; they penetrate all groups in society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people . . . Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches its lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp
We now come to the third state of a prisoner’s mental reaction; the psychology of the prisoner after liberation. During this psychological phase, one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of brutality which surrounded them in camp life. Now being free, they thought they they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for then was that now they were the oppressor instead of the oppressed. They became instigators not objects of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences. . . Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them”.
Let’s not use the memory of those that perished in the Holocaust (both the decent and the indecent) in our competition for victimhood in the propaganda war against Hamas.
Selectiveness does much to detract from this article: Amb. Oren boycotted the meeting with Viktor Orban, even though he has proved a useful friend of Israel in the EU.
But presumably there was no problem with earlier Israeli diplomats meeting members of West Germany's 1950s cabinet under Konrad Adenauer, who denounced the de-Nazification of Germany and encouraged the reincorporation of prominent ex-Nazis into West German society. Among these was his State Secretary Hans Globke, the second most important man in his government and, formerly, the principal author of the Nuremberg Racial Laws.
Viktor Orban and Narendra Modi, among others, have proved good allies of Israel in times of need, which are the best allies to have. One should look at the open anti-Semitism from "progressives", like Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal's dismissal of rape crimes against Israeli women, to realize no amount of reasoning, debate and moral appeal will ever sway them from their baser instincts.
For diplomatic acumen, I favor Henry Kissinger over Michael Oren:
One of the most despicable aspects of the “anti-Zionist,” i.e. antisemitic, Left is the appropriation of the Holocaust as a propaganda tool in its war against the Jewish state. Charging Israel with genocide is nothing more than a press release from Mr. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.
You've got one rabbi. I've got the totality of history. You're a vile Jew-bashing bigot who demonstrates the truth of the adage that antisemitism is the socialism of fools.
To take just one example of your ignorance and stupidity, Stalin wasn't a "half-Jew." Both of his parents were ethnic Georgians.
I’m guessing that you’re a proud member of the far right (versus the far left progressive elite). Only they can offer such a passionate rendition of the greatest hits of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Surprised you didn’t include more quotes from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
Is Jew hatred your specialty or do you have a separate compilation of conspiracy theories for other minority groups?
Thanks for helping us better appreciate the righteous gentiles in our midst
The writers deeply critical of Israel cited by Oren are all brilliant, profoundly morally serious, internationally very highly respected people-not to mention mostly Jewish. If such writers around the world are now writing against Israel in Gaza, Israel is, by definition, in trouble with the world’s intelligentsia. Maybe Israel should take these critiques very seriously.
I have always appreciated Amos Oz’s saying that there are two honest readings of the Holocaust - either never again, or never again to us. I am sad to see the latter version rising in significance along with Israel’s military might, while the decline of the former reflects a loss of the moral values that had many Jews (and Israelis) saying “black lives matter” and fighting starvation and oppression around the globe. If only “never again to us” is true then of course eradicating anyone who stands against us in any way is moral, including imitating tactics that Nazis and Stalinists and Khmer Rouge used - using starvation to destroy the populations you fear when you have the power to do so, shooting people who have nowhere to run or hide, using collective punishment like destroying homes of anyone related to someone fighting you, removing freedoms to work or study or travel, etc. Being an Arab citizen of Israel was to be harassed and restricted on a daily basis, and for its “security” Israel has now created thousands of angry orphans and bereaved parents who are not going anywhere. Neither Israel nor its Arab citizens can live in peace if they do not respect each other. The Arab anger and hatred is wrong, but it will never be removed from Arab hearts by starvation, humiliation, abuse, and careless killings. Meeting it with just as much anger and hatred in return will never make Israel safe unless Israel is actually going to try to steel itself to remove every living enemy and antisemite from the face of the earth. And if that intent is not genocidal, it comes dangerously close to it.
Such an important voice, which must not be silenced. This indeed points the way to an endless spiral into deep evil. Tit for tat genocidal justification. If western humanity does not comprehend the urgency to end the annihilation of Israel right here, none of us will survive in the long term. Liberalism will die.
Israel is endlessly criticized by Christians and Muslims and Europeans and Americans for “not learning the lessons of the Holocaust,” and for not heeding the “never again” pledge.
They don’t seem to understand that the “lessons of the Holocaust” that *we* learned are different from the “lessons” they use to flatter themselves and, now, to denigrate us.
*We* learned that Christians may profess brotherly love and meekness, but that won’t stop them from murdering us and our children so they can steal our wealth for themselves. And that they will feel good and righteous about themselves for doing it.
*We* learned that the Muslims need only the lightest push from their leaders to be driven to massacre their Jewish neighbors. And that they will feel good and righteous about themselves for doing it.
*We* learned that Europeans may cloak themselves in philosophy and culture, but from the lofty heights of their academies and in the soaring language of their diplomats, they will write moral justifications for our liquidation. And that they will feel good and righteous about themselves for doing it.
*We* learned that when the lights of Europe are extinguishing for the Jews, and the Americans have the chance to welcome our “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” they will slam down immigration quotas and doom us to the gas chambers. And that they will feel good and righteous about themselves for doing it.
The lessons of the Holocaust that *we* learned are that great peoples of the Earth - the Christians, the Muslims, the Europeans, and even the Americans - are insane and cruel and dishonest beyond even our worst imaginations. That we are truly alone and the only way to survive in a world populated by insane and cruel and dishonest people is to be strong enough to make it too costly for them to kill us again.
When we said “never again,” we meant “never again to us.”
We learned those lessons of the Holocaust well, and we just keep learning them.
Not all Christians criticize Israel: Christians United for Israel (https://cufi.org ) is the largest pro-Israel organization in the world, with over 10 million members.
30% of Brazil's population is now Evangelical with strong support for Israel, to the point that Lula D'Silva's approval rating dropped significantly the week after he compared Israel to the Nazis.
I am moved by their passion for Israel, more so when I see the ambivalence in many "modern" Jewish congregations.
Don't disdain or offend those who want to be allies by painting with an overly broad brush.
Of course. Not all of anyone ever does or believes anything, and that is as true for Christians as it is for Jews and for everyone else. There were righteous gentiles during the Holocaust as there are today, and as much as we appreciate them, the Holocaust’s lesson is that we would be foolish ever to rely on them to protect us from everyone else.
I agree with everything you said and it horrifies me - from a friendly American Christian 💙🤍💙🤍💙🤍
Much more than useful. I try never to forget that there are more Christian Zionists than there are Jews by many, many millions. Probably hundreds of millions.
There are just so few of us.
I regularly ready Jewish Chronicle on line. Even in that tiny number of British Jews, it appears more than a few will sign the most radical anti Israel documents to be published in virulently Israelopbhic papers like Guardian and Independent. As in America among the anti Zionist Jewish groups they crave acceptance on the "progressive" left. maybe the reasons go deeper.
Loud does not mean strong and quiet does not mean weak
Haman (in Megilas Esther) was considered “evil” because he tried to collective annihilate the entire Jewish people, men, women and children (even purely innocents infants).
Yet just a few generations earlier it was the Jews who had been commanded to collectively annihilate Haman’s ancestors (Amalek) including all men, women and children (which the Jews obediently completed (except for Haman’s great; great . . grandfather who was granted a one night reprieve (during which his future descendants were conceived)).
So why was Haman evil? After all his goal was to treat the Jewish people exactly as they had treated his own people?
And how about Hitler, undoubtedly a descendant (and least in spirit) of Amalek and Haman? Why was he evil if he merely sought to complete the mission that Haman failed to accomplish?
Bottom line is that the Jewish victims of Hitler (and their descendants) have no greater right to march under the banner of “Never Again” then the Amalek victims of the Jews and their descendants (including Hitler himself) The banner of “Never Again’ either belongs to everyone or to no one.
As an aside, Hamas is not Amalek nor is it the Nazis. They are fighting a holy war to eliminate Jewish sovereignty over sacred Islamic lands, just as the Messianic Zionists are fighting a holy war to eliminate any risk of non Jewish sovereignty over any portion of the Jewish holy land.
If the Jews departed Palestine (or relinquished Jewish sovereignty in exchange for minority rights in a unified Islamic Caliphate) would Hamas nevertheless seek the annihilation of every Jewish man, women and child?
If you doubt this point, ask yourself the following question — Who is the “Great Satan” in the eyes of Iran and its axis of resistance? Not the Jews but the aggressive and oppressive American and European colonialists. Israel is merely their middle eastern proxy — hence the title “Little Satan.”
Biblical sources contain no evidence of the Jews ever being commanded to annihilate the descendants of Yishmael nor have the descendants of Yishmael ever sought to annihilate of Issac or Israel. Conversion or death was certainly a feature of both Muslim and Christian persecution of the Jews but no one offered conversion to the Jews of Shushan nor to the Jews of Nazi German (nor to the Amalek ancestors of Haman or Hitler).
It’s worth noting that the term “Semite” includes descendants of both Issac and Yishmael (Jews and Arabs).
Anti-Semites hate both Muslims and Jews, as we’ve seen in the post October 7th surge in both Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
Bottom line is that the Middle East conflict has nothing to do with Shushan or Nazi Germany and it’s intellectually dishonest to conflate the two to score propaganda points.
The bottom line is that the Muslims want to kill the Jews
Point Finale
Nothing more Nothing Less
Mark is wrong. Arabs and Jews have lived happy and well coordinated lives in Spain during what is still called "The Golden Age" of about 3 centuries until the Christians drove them away and instituted the disaster known is the inquisition. The present disagreement and fighting between Arabs and Jews is based on political and not religious discord and this is a relatively recent feature in our past good relationships. We both believe in the one God (having different names, but otherwise the same). We both abstain from eating pork, celebrate a day of rest every week, and circumcise our young male descendents. From the time of Abraham we are directly related through his genes, which is why sometimes they are called our brothers.
Rich of you to say that I am wrong..
David,
We dont live in the Golden Age of Enlightenment, or the Golden Age of Islam, for that matter. Three hundred and Twelve hundred years ago respectively.
We dont live in those times, we live in the Twenty First Century, and many of us have lived in Twentieth Century.
So for the better part of the nighteenth century through the twentieth century and into the early part of the twenty first century , you have never ending attacks on Jews by Arabs.
The " modern" day attacks attacks started against the Jews in the 1920 time frame .
The Aleppo massacre in 1850 was one of worst massacres by Arabs was perpetrated on Christians.
So David,
I have a hockey game to go to, if you do respond, please respond with a list of ALL ATTACKS and murders against Jews, lets say starting in the Fifteen Hundreds?
If as you say, Jews and Arabs have lived together peacefully for the last Six Hundred Plus this should require little or no research on your part.
All the best
This captures well the true looniness and excuse-making of moral equivalence. It won't work. The stories of the Bible have been put to many uses. I cannot think of a less worthy example of that than this.
Just to clarify — there is zero moral equivalence between Israel’s just war in Gaza versus Hamas’ despicable slaughter of peace loving innocent Israeli civilians living cooperatively with their Gazan neighbors.
There is no moral equivalence between the Nazi’s master plan to exterminate the Jewish “race” versus our Christians and Muslims persecutors who sought to convert us to extinguish the Jewish “faith” versus the Muslim world in 1947-48 that refused to accept Jewish sovereignty over Islamic holy lands in the Middle East (which they sincerely believe is their God given inheritance as descendants of Yishmael.
True the United Nations voted by a 2/3rds majority to grant us sovereignty in Palestine. But it’s equally true that every Muslim member state voted against the proposal and the vote passed only because a supermajority of voting power was held by Christian member states that committed the worst atrocities against Jews in the past millennium (including the Holocaust).
Does it offend you that I would include non-Jews under the protective umbrella of “Never Again”?
I learned that from my parents who survived Auschwitz and lost the vast majority of their immediate family there in the Summer of 1944. I learned that from Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) which he completed in 1946 (just one year after his liberation).
I learned that from the Bible — fron the empathy that we were commanded to feel to other “foreigners” because we too were once “foreigners” in the land of Egypt.
Why was it necessary for the Bible to teach us that Joseph enslaved the Egyptians before the Egyptians enslaved the Jews?
Or to teach us that the Jews conquered the holy land from the seven nations before the Babylonians and then the Ramens conquered it from us?
Or to teach us that the Jews exterminated every man, women and child in Amalek before Haman (Amalek descendent) would to exterminate the Jews and before Hitler actually exterminated 1/3rd of European Jewry.
Not to teach us to make loony moral equivalences but to sensitize us to other victims of extermination (empathize to other who have been exterminated because you too had been persecuted in Auschwitz)
Spilling blood in God’s name is never worthy unless you are a true believer (like the Chirstian Crusaders or the Protestant/Catholic holy wars or the Shia/Sunni holy wars or the Hindu/Muslim holy wars or the holy wars in the “Promised Land” between the descendants of Yishmael (includes Hamas) and the descendants of Issac (including the Massianic Zionist settlers. Worthiness is in the eyes of the beholder.
Was it worthy in your eyes for Abraham to slaughter Issac or for the Jews to annihilate Amalek? Weren’t they also spilling blood in God’s Name?
Maybe God has nothing to do with it. But if so, on what basis do the “Chosen People” claim an eternal inheritance in the “Chosen Labd”?
I really feel for Israel, how the hell you stand strong in the face of this onslaught- I salute you. Don't care what the idiots say I stand with you and hope you prevail. It must be extremely weird to have the truth be upended to make you the bad guys, what the hell happened to the world that this is where we are. How can people really believe the rubbish that is being targeted at Israel - did we forget our own history as a civilisation that fought and died to stop this horror ever happening again. No surrender!!
All those appropriating the Holocaust in defense of the Arab and Muslim supremacist cause of Palestinianism overlook one very important fact: the Jews were not trying to destroy or even harm Germany. They were loyal citizens. The Arabs launched a jihad in 1948, and have been trying to turn that loss into a win ever since. It is a genocidal cause. It is the Arab version of lebensraum. They don’t need more land, they just want it and are willing to murder the indigenous people of the land to get it. This argument should be made now. Don’t wait until after the war.
Michael, excellent essay. Thank you.
I would not forego the endeavor, but I question how much mileage Israel would get from “a quest to reclaim the Holocaust”. Certainly, there may be a benefit when directed to those not infected with Jew hatred. But I doubt Israel’s enemies and their supporters care a whit about the past suffering of Jews.
Israel’s problems seem to have arisen from its own failure to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. I was struck by the irony of the cited Netanyahu 2020 Holocaust Remembrance Day speech stating that “[t]he Jewish people have learned the lessons of the Holocaust always to take seriously the threats of those who seek our destruction . . . .” Really? By the time of that speech, the country had watched both Hamas and Hezbollah grow from surmountable to existential threats to the State of Israel.
It seems Israel’s fundamental error in the past has been to place too much emphasis on what the “world” thinks, rather than actually eliminating “the threats of those who seek [its] destruction.” The Israeli government has apparently taken that notion to heart now, but the question is whether it is too late.
Don’t forget, the British and Americans could have bombed the rail lines in, but chose not to. They could have allowed more refugees to land, or to escape to what became Israel. They chose not to. Even after the Holocaust, with the British keeping camp survivors in new camps in Cyprus.
The British could also have pressed their Arab partners in fighting the Ottomans, and later the Nazis, to accept partition - instead the British pushed them against it and lent their generals towards the goal of ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, of the Jews in the fledgling Jewish state. Sure, the generals “resigned” without home command knowing…. Right…. Maybe they thought that the UK would be called in to save the last bit, and regain control of the Mandate via the typical British “draw lines to keep ethnic groups fighting and dependent on the UK” plan… who knows.
Meanwhile, Israel needs to drop the fantasy of global acceptance. The world, West and East, will happily feed the Jews to the crocodile, just as the did the Czech. Build many small modular liquid thorium molten salt reactors, as it doesn’t take much to cut off ocean pipelines. Get a stockpile of materials to fabricate weapons. Go for low cost options - use bullets or bolts rather than costly missiles to take down cheap rockets, regardless of increased collateral risk. And don’t be so quick to share all tech with supposed “allies”. Make sure that Israel can feed itself, regardless of what the world wants. A dependent Jew is a dead Jew - Israel needs a new declaration of true independence.
Beautifully Said.
After watching the sick displays of Jew Hatred here in Montreal , after the Oct7th savagery,, I quickly came to realise that no Jew is safe, no democracy is safe.
The lefts calls for equality and justice were just a facade for hatred against everything we stand for, everything we believe in.
And I will go one step further, it is the evil within.
I stand with Israel, yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever.
I wrote on another blog that the "righteous gentiles" needs to be updated to our allies today. One example is Douglas Murray, another is my "secular gentile Zionist" friend.
During the BLM riots some proposed that "all lives matter" and this too was "racist" as it stripped the racism against black Americans of its uniqueness. So I tell Mishra and anyone else that "never again for anyone" is racist Jew Hate....meant to take away the uniqueness of the crime of the extermination of the Jews. The bombing of the WCK van, Jose Andres has all ready concluded was deliberate. I saw him interviewed on PBS Newshour and I heard his all ready tendentious comments prior to this tragic incident. To my surprise Joe Scarborough said today on his show that Oct. 7th was a war on the world's 15 million Jews....and that's what I've been saying. Holocaust museums,movies, have apparently done almost nothing by way of educating people. If kids laughed during Schinder's List I was told that they live in violent neighborhoods where life is barely valued so of course they laugh. I don't know what Jewishness means to many secular Israelis and I don't know what Zionism means to the Haredi who I see fighting the Israeli police but not for Israel against its enemies. The Jews who are anti Israel and make comparisons to between Israel and the policies of Nazi Germany have to answer to their own consciences if they have any. But in the public sphere they provide aid and comfort for those who hope for another Holocaust.
Our propaganda war against Hamas cannot be won by invoking the Holocaust but instead by the actions being taken by our heroic soldiers on the ground in Gaza to minimize collateral damage as they pursue their “just war” to eliminate Hamas as a known ongoing existential threat to the Jewish State and its people.
And also by the actions taken by Hamas to expose its own civilians as “human shields” and to use every civilian death outside the tunnels as a propaganda win for their “protectors” inside those tunnels.
The propaganda war is now entering a decisive phase and the outcome is entirely in Israel’s control. To win decisively Israel must flood the zone with humanitarian aid and safely evacuate the civilians from Rafah before completing our existential mission to destroy Hamas.
On the other hand, if Israel stand idly by as starvation claims the lives of countless civilians outside the tunnels, we will have gifted the ultimate propaganda victory to Hamas even posthumously (even if they never emerge from the tunnels other than as holy martyrs).
As a child of survivors (whose family on both sides perished in Auschwitz, I have an additional objection to invoking the Holocaust which I will express simply by way of excerpts from Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”
“From all of this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two - the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man. Both can be found everywhere; they penetrate all groups in society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people . . . Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches its lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp
We now come to the third state of a prisoner’s mental reaction; the psychology of the prisoner after liberation. During this psychological phase, one observed that people with natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the influences of brutality which surrounded them in camp life. Now being free, they thought they they could use their freedom licentiously and ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for then was that now they were the oppressor instead of the oppressed. They became instigators not objects of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences. . . Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them”.
Let’s not use the memory of those that perished in the Holocaust (both the decent and the indecent) in our competition for victimhood in the propaganda war against Hamas.
I dont consider the war against Hamas Propaganda. Its the cold hard TRUTH!
Selectiveness does much to detract from this article: Amb. Oren boycotted the meeting with Viktor Orban, even though he has proved a useful friend of Israel in the EU.
But presumably there was no problem with earlier Israeli diplomats meeting members of West Germany's 1950s cabinet under Konrad Adenauer, who denounced the de-Nazification of Germany and encouraged the reincorporation of prominent ex-Nazis into West German society. Among these was his State Secretary Hans Globke, the second most important man in his government and, formerly, the principal author of the Nuremberg Racial Laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Adenauer#Amnesty_and_employment_of_Nazis
Viktor Orban and Narendra Modi, among others, have proved good allies of Israel in times of need, which are the best allies to have. One should look at the open anti-Semitism from "progressives", like Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal's dismissal of rape crimes against Israeli women, to realize no amount of reasoning, debate and moral appeal will ever sway them from their baser instincts.
For diplomatic acumen, I favor Henry Kissinger over Michael Oren:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/02/henry-kissinger-interview-israel-hamas-war-00129374
One of the most despicable aspects of the “anti-Zionist,” i.e. antisemitic, Left is the appropriation of the Holocaust as a propaganda tool in its war against the Jewish state. Charging Israel with genocide is nothing more than a press release from Mr. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.
V.I. Lenin and J.V. Stalin weren’t Jews, you moron.
You've got one rabbi. I've got the totality of history. You're a vile Jew-bashing bigot who demonstrates the truth of the adage that antisemitism is the socialism of fools.
To take just one example of your ignorance and stupidity, Stalin wasn't a "half-Jew." Both of his parents were ethnic Georgians.
I’m guessing that you’re a proud member of the far right (versus the far left progressive elite). Only they can offer such a passionate rendition of the greatest hits of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Surprised you didn’t include more quotes from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
Is Jew hatred your specialty or do you have a separate compilation of conspiracy theories for other minority groups?
Thanks for helping us better appreciate the righteous gentiles in our midst
I Agree with every word spoken.
Israel please be strong, Israel please be safe.
The writers deeply critical of Israel cited by Oren are all brilliant, profoundly morally serious, internationally very highly respected people-not to mention mostly Jewish. If such writers around the world are now writing against Israel in Gaza, Israel is, by definition, in trouble with the world’s intelligentsia. Maybe Israel should take these critiques very seriously.
I have always appreciated Amos Oz’s saying that there are two honest readings of the Holocaust - either never again, or never again to us. I am sad to see the latter version rising in significance along with Israel’s military might, while the decline of the former reflects a loss of the moral values that had many Jews (and Israelis) saying “black lives matter” and fighting starvation and oppression around the globe. If only “never again to us” is true then of course eradicating anyone who stands against us in any way is moral, including imitating tactics that Nazis and Stalinists and Khmer Rouge used - using starvation to destroy the populations you fear when you have the power to do so, shooting people who have nowhere to run or hide, using collective punishment like destroying homes of anyone related to someone fighting you, removing freedoms to work or study or travel, etc. Being an Arab citizen of Israel was to be harassed and restricted on a daily basis, and for its “security” Israel has now created thousands of angry orphans and bereaved parents who are not going anywhere. Neither Israel nor its Arab citizens can live in peace if they do not respect each other. The Arab anger and hatred is wrong, but it will never be removed from Arab hearts by starvation, humiliation, abuse, and careless killings. Meeting it with just as much anger and hatred in return will never make Israel safe unless Israel is actually going to try to steel itself to remove every living enemy and antisemite from the face of the earth. And if that intent is not genocidal, it comes dangerously close to it.
Such an important voice, which must not be silenced. This indeed points the way to an endless spiral into deep evil. Tit for tat genocidal justification. If western humanity does not comprehend the urgency to end the annihilation of Israel right here, none of us will survive in the long term. Liberalism will die.
The relevance of Jabotinsky’s “The Iron Wall” lives on. God help us.
The writers you cite crtitucizing are all brilliant, profoundly morally serious people, and