On Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 – Never Again – to whom?
On HMD 2024, we ask yet again what lessons have been learned from the actions of the German and other European fascists towards Jewish people – actions which culminated in the Holocaust.
At this important time of remembrance for the world and especially for Jewish people, we deeply regret that Jewish Establishment organisations in our countries (along with the state of Israel) seem to have drawn only a partial lesson from the vow “never again”. They limit its lesson: never again should this happen to Jews.
The Genocide Convention was created as a direct response to the Holocaust and Nazi occupations of other countries. It embedded “Never Again to anyone” in international law. The vow and the law do not only reject death camps. They commit us to opposing every dimension of oppression or persecution of a people, and of fascistic repression of free speech, organisation and assembly.
We remember the victims of Nazi Holocaust– overwhelmingly but not only Jewish people – with love, honour, respect and compassion. Our commemoration must be more than a memorial: in their names we value every single human life and we vow to end the Othering and dehumanising of groups including those we may have been taught to regard as our enemies.
We Jews know all too well that dehumanisation enables others to be harmed in ways that we would never accept for ourselves. Therefore we object when senior Israeli state and military representatives use dehumanising language about Palestinians.
The Holocaust must be honestly recalled and respected, therefore, we abhor the abuse of the memory of the Nazi Holocaust and its exploitation for genocidal ends. [i]
In their Open Letter on the Misuse of Holocaust Memory, Jewish academics Omer Bartov, Christopher R. Browning, Jane Caplan, Debórah Dwork, Michael Rothberg, et al “express [their] dismay and disappointment at political leaders and notable public figures invoking Holocaust memory to explain the current crisis in Gaza and Israel”. Their letter cites many examples of Holocaust imagery and language. [ii]
As well as diminishing the Holocaust, Raz Segal makes clear that Holocaust references do not aid us in understanding the present. “The context of the Hamas attack on …Israelis, …, is completely different from the context of the attack on Jews during the Holocaust. And without the historical context of Israeli settler colonialism since the 1948 Nakba, we cannot explain how we got here nor imagine different futures.”
We acknowledge the horror of the dreadful attacks of October 7th even as we reiterate that the Holocaust is a misleading reference point. The Israelis and foreign workers who were killed, wounded or captured – in clear violation of international law on the protection of civilians – were not targeted as Jews. This was an attack on Israel as a state. We reiterate that Israel is not the representative of the Jews worldwide, notwithstanding Zionism’s long effort to confuse Jewishness with Israel.
On this day we honour the tradition of Jewish solidarity with the oppressed, and all those who were murdered, and all who survived the horrors of the ghettoes and the camps of the Nazi era.
Drawing on the lessons of the Holocaust and the centuries of discrimination against our Jewish ancestors, today we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Palestine; with all those whose free speech on Palestine is being suppressed, especially Muslim people, and also including dissident Jews; and with Black and Indigenous people who continue to experience structural racism in the US, in Europe, Australia and Aoteoroa New Zealand.
The history of Jewish suffering is part of who we are. We understand inter-generational trauma and so we contemplate with horror the longterm impact of the current pulverisation of Gaza. Our thoughts go to the children who are seeing and enduring suffering that no one, of any age, should witness or experience.
Never Again – For Anybody – for any people.
[i] For example: Prof. Emeritus Avi Shlaim, in his recent comprehensive essay ‘War on Gaza: Netanyahu, Hamas and the origins of the 2023 Nakba war’, opines in the section titled ‘Depicting the Palestinians as Nazis’, that this is a means of dehumanizing the Palestinians, that Palestinian resistance to occupation has been “decontextualised and de-historicised”, and that this is a “dangerous dynamic that can be used to justify the ethnic cleansing of Gaza”. He refers to Joe Biden’s statement that it was “the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust”, as a “trivializ[ation of] the Holocaust”.
[ii] Their examples included: “ … Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan donning a yellow star featuring the words “Never Again” while addressing the UN General Assembly, to US President Joe Biden saying that Hamas had “engaged in barbarism that is as consequential as the Holocaust,” while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that “Hamas are the new Nazis”,” and so on.” This is all part of demonising and dehumanising Hamas.
Thank you
Using the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews as propaganda in relation to the October 7th attack is not only cheap, it is utterly obscene and abhorrent and repulsive.
Anyway, just for your information, the number of Israelis killed on October 7th has gone from the initial 1,400 to 1,200 and now 1,140. The 200 reduction some five weeks after the attack was on account of them being identified as Hamas fighters (who were obviously burnt beyond recognition and had to be identified by their DNA), but I’m not aware of any explanation given by Israeli authorities for the further reduction of 60. I wonder if it will slowly creep down further.
And it seems highly unlikely that Israel doesn’t know more-or-less EXACTLY how many of their own were killed by IDF tanks and helicopter gunships on October 7th, and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t several hundred or more, mostly from the Nova music festival.
Thank you JVL. Well expressed.
In a year or so’s time, after the starvation and the epidemic, they will probably decide to destroy Al Aqsa and maybe The Dome of The Rock as well. It will most likely start slowly, just enough to convince the world’s Muslim population and anyone who has been paying attention of what their intentions are. Others will brush it aside, as they always do. There will almost certainly be violent retaliations in Europe and Asia, and if there aren’t, they can be easily arranged. It will be a tinderbox. At this point the worlds so-called journalists will know exactly what to do.