The lesson we should really learn from the Holocaust

Remembering with love our six million Jewish brothers and sisters so cruelly murdered during the Holocaust. May their memory eternally be a blessing.

There is growing debate about the purpose and effectiveness of Holocaust Education. Decades of Holocaust Education seem to have provided insufficient defense against today’s resurgence of antisemitism on both the left and the right. Nor has it proven an effective break on growing societal polarisation and extremism more broadly.

I have been reflecting on the events of the past few years, post-October 7th, on the momentous day when the last of our hostages, the hero Ran Gvili A’H, is finally brought home and laid to rest, may his memory – along with those of all of Israel’s fallen heroes – be a blessing.

It seems to me the true lesson of the Holocaust has been this – that society remains susceptible to the ‘big lie’. And it has only been in the context of widespread public belief in ‘big lies’ that the Holocaust could happen.

Lehavdil (with no implied comparison to the Holocaust, contra recent remarks by the Governor of Minnesota), the widespread street-level resistance to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in Minnesota provides a powerful counter-instance of what happens when public support is not widespread. Put crudely, no Holocaust could happen to illegal immigrants in the US today.

The ‘big lie’ in the 1930s revolved around supposed Jewish conspiracies – to cause German defeat in World War I, to variously dominate or undermine the German economy, to dilute German racial ‘purity’.

This came despite German Jews being the most assimilated Jews anywhere in the world; despite the German Jews desperately trying to be more German than the Germans. After all, Germany was the home of the Jewish Reform Movement – a movement with the explicit objective to ‘modernise’ Judaism; to revise the parameters of what it means to be Jewish; to closely align ‘Jewish’ values and practices with those of contemporary non-Jewish society.

Despite this, Daniel Goldhagen’s seminal book, ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners’, tells the story of how during the Holocaust ordinary Germans could come to commit the most horrifying bloodthirsty actions with little apparent unease or regret. They could only do so because they believed what they were doing was right. And they could only believe what they were doing was right because they believed the big lies about Jewish conspiracies.

Around the world over the last few years a new ‘big lie’ has been able to take root. The growing hatred for the Jewish people is based on a deliberate and systematic misrepresentation of facts around the Gaza War.

Professions which were once previously dedicated to independence and objectivity have now become subverted to promote ‘the cause’. They now serve narratives promoted by activist-captured international media and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The checks and balances which were once in place have themselves been captured by the activists, whether through fear, favour or – all too often – their own willing ideological alignment with ‘the cause’.

During the Gaza War, Israelis have seen regular footage dutifully released by the IDF showing the Hamas military installations found systematically embedded in schools, hospitals, aid warehouses, cemeteries, children’s bedrooms, and more. So much evidence that it is truly overwhelming.

How much of that evidence has appeared in global news? Almost none, despite it being so widely available…

By contrast, activist-captured global media has quickly announced without verification the manipulated casualty numbers.. quickly attributed wrongful blame for atrocities, including some that never actually happened… quickly showed highly selective and in some cases faked video of civilian casualties… quickly misrepresented unfortunate children suffering from serious diseases as victims of famine… quickly aired documentaries by terror-affiliated propagandists… and quickly took comment from terror-infiltrated NGOs…

Therefore, for previously undecided members of the public, what conclusions could they possibly reach other than that Israel has committed ‘genocide’ in Gaza? They have been shown only one side of the story, and in a deliberately distorted way.

This explains why today the Jewish people – who have shown up time and again for their ‘intersectional’ progressive allies, who have always been highly loyal to their host countries, who have made so much contribution to every society in which we have lived – have been totally abandoned.

There has been no street-level resistance to the antisemitic mobs that routinely threaten Jewish schools, vandalise Jewish businesses and surround Jewish places of worship.

There has been no street-level resistance to the exclusion of Jews on campus, in the arts, in publishing.

Sadly, the new lies about the Jewish people have found widespread public support.

Sadly, therefore, the Jewish people today are exposed to the possibilities of another Holocaust (G-d forbid).

What can we do about it?

We hear that the creation of the State of Israel has prevented a second Holocaust from happening. Not long ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu made exactly this claim with respect to Israel’s actions against Iran under Operation Rising Lion.

However, Iranian nukes are not the only danger facing the Jewish people today.

In Jewish tradition, we do not believe that ‘sticks and stones may hurt my bones but words will never hurt me’. The Chofetz Chaim, one of our core texts on evil speech, teaches emphatically about the power of words.

However, Israel – in the words of everyone from President Trump to ex-Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, to former Government of Israel spokesperson, Eylon Levy – has completely abandoned the battlefield of public diplomacy.

Remarkably, on 23rd October 2023, a mere two weeks after the October 7th atrocity, on the eve of Israel’s first incursions into Gaza, Israel chose that particular moment in its history to shut down its public diplomacy ministry and reallocate its paltry NIS 23.8 million budget elsewhere.

As much as we can admire the bravery, determination and resilience of Israeli society, as much as we can herald the remarkable triumphs of Israel’s defense and intelligence services, as much as we can be proud of the fearlessness of our frontline troops including the many reservists among them, and as much as we can respect the stubborn single-mindedness of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Government, Israel through its deliberate decision to abandon public diplomacy has allowed for the conditions in which the ‘big lie’ has taken root.

The lesson from the Holocaust, then, is this – the Jewish people, led by Israel, can only truly say ‘never again’ by taking public diplomacy seriously, by building as formidable an array of capabilities on the information battleground as it has on the military battleground, by contesting every lie told about the Jewish people everywhere those lies are told, and by giving no succour to those among our enemies who stand behind those lies. May it happen soon.