Holocaust Remembrance Must Not Be Weaponized against the Jewish State

This year, as we commemorate Yom HaShoah, the day to remember the six million who perished in the Nazi Holocaust, recent developments raise questions as to whether we have learned anything at all.  

First, as ADL’s 2024 Global 100 survey revealed, 20 percent of people worldwide never heard of the Holocaust. More disturbing, less than half the respondents – 48 percent – recognized the historical accuracy of the Holocaust, and that number significantly declines to 39 percent among 18- to 34-year-olds. 

Second, as the last generation of Holocaust survivors pass away, we are losing the most effective voices who can convey the extent and the emotional devastation of the Shoah, further exacerbating the education gap about what happened. 

And thirdly, as antisemitism flourishes powerfully around the world, particularly after 10/7, the Never Again theme that emerged from the testimony over the years is under more stress than ever before. While there is nothing comparable to the Shoah, and one should always be careful to avoid comparisons, part of the message of Holocaust education is that it happened after centuries of inculcated Jew-hatred into the minds of millions. Never Again must start with preventing its root cause: antisemitism.  

As if this combination of historical developments were not challenging enough, since 10/7 an additional element has been added to this historical mix: the widespread tendency to use the Holocaust against the Jewish people. 

For many decades, efforts in this direction were marginal, taking the form of Holocaust denial, based on the underlying theme that had existed for years, that the Jews controlled the media and all forms of information. Jews allegedly used this power to concoct and disseminate the idea of the murder of six million in order to accrue more power and win support for the “illegitimate” state of Israel.  

As insidious as this development was, it largely never took hold.  

Now, however, an equally insidious line of attack with much more acceptance has surfaced and is having a far more devastating impact. That is the notion that in fighting its defensive war against Hamas after the massacre of October 7, Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.

Let’s be clear: what Israel is doing in Gaza has not the slightest resemblance to genocide. This war against Hamas started because Israel was brutally attacked by a party who, if it had the power, based on their conduct on October 7, would eagerly have committed a true genocide against the Jewish people. Since 10/7, Israel has been forced to fight an urban war against this terrorist group that deliberately places itself in the heart of civilian populations.  

When one introduces other facts— that Israel mostly warns civilians to leave areas that it plans to attack, when the ratio of terrorist deaths to civilian is much lower than most such wars, and when the context of the war is the continuing inhumane use of hostages as pawns in the conflict, it all adds up to something that has no relationship to genocide whatsoever.

It is no accident that such a charge has been leveled against the Jewish state. It serves a number of purposes that could not be achieved without it. 

First, it evens the score of history. For decades it has been clear through testimony, museums, books that European society had committed the greatest crime against humanity, an outcome of centuries of Jew hatred, by the destruction of two-thirds of European Jews.

Now, by claiming that Israel in its war was committing a similar act – the destruction of the Palestinian people – the moral score was far more even, reducing both the guilt of the Shoah and the need to do something about it. 

Second, it is particularly purposeful that the people whose suffering from the Nazis led to the development of the very concept of genocide are now being accused of the very same thing. This irony adds to the power of the accusation, making it even more insidious when claiming that a people who should know better are acting out the very evil of history that they experienced. 

Third, while Holocaust denial has had its moments, it never infiltrated thinking in a widespread fashion. Holocaust minimization and trivialization are far more serious threats to the understanding of the Shoah as we move forward. In this sense, the accusation of genocide against the Jewish people themselves serves to minimize the power of the Shoah by in effect saying that the Jews are guilty of the same thing, so let’s not focus too much on what happened to them. Not only have other genocides occurred but the Jews themselves are now parties to one, so it goes. 

In sum, on this occasion of remembrance, which becomes even more important as the years pass, we encounter the effort to turn the Holocaust against the Jewish people by, in effect, saying that just as the perpetrators, the assisters and the bystanders all had a role to play in the Shoah, so today the Jewish state and all of its Jewish supporters are guilty in committing their own genocide.