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In 1967, I was a 16 year old high school student. That summer, I had a life-changing experience at a summer camp operated by the Conservative movement, Camp Ramah in Massachusetts. The camp offered what today we might call an immersive Jewish experience. It was staffed by college students fresh from anti-war activism on their campuses. They brought that passion to camp and conveyed it in social justice programs and classes dedicated to study of Jewish texts and philosophy.
One of those classes was taught by Joey (as we knew him then) Reimer. He would later become Prof. Joseph Reimer, now an emeritus professor of Jewish education at Brandeis University. That summer, he taught us about the Big Ideas of Jewish thought ranging from the Holocaust to the film, 2001: a Space Odyssey, which was released that summer. Through the intervening years, I have forgotten many of the topics we discussed, but the two I mentioned above are etched clearly in my memory.
Reimer as I recall, asked us the question: could another Holocaust happen? This was only 20 years after that tragedy. There had been no genocide in the intervening years. The Holocaust seemed to us an exceptional event. In your optimistic naive youth, it seemed its enormity would never be repeated. I believed then in the essential goodness of humanity; that the world would learn a lesson from it and ensure it could never happen again.
How wrong I was. How naive we were. We could not anticipate the depravity human beings are capable of. In hindsight, the Holocaust may have been an exceptional event in Jewish history, but it was by no means exceptional in human history. As distinguished Holocaust historian, Yehuda Bauer wrote:
If what happens to the Jews is unique, then by definition it doesn’t concern us, beyond our pity and commiseration for the victims. If the Holocaust is not a universal problem, then why should a public school system in Philadelphia, New York or Timbuktu teach it? Well, the answer is that there is no uniqueness, not even of a unique event. Anything that happens once, can happen again: not quite in the same way, perhaps, but in an equivalent form.
There were genocides before the Holocaust (Armenia, Namibia) and there have been several genocides in the years since (Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka). The Bible even recounts the extermination by the Children of Israel of several rival tribes inhabiting ancient Israel.
Despite these repeated genocides, humanity has learned nothing from them. It does not step in when there are warning signs., before the slaughter commences. Once it happens, people watch as if deaf and dumb, as blood runs in the streets. It takes guts to intervene. It takes almost superman fortitude to know what you are doing is right in the face of such powerful evil forces. That is why there are so few who do resist. It is why the world has stood by in the face of six months of genocide in Gaza.
The US stood by. All of Europe stood by. Biden vetoed UN Security Council resolutions three times. Only when he was threatened by a potential election defeat, did he demand a Gaza ceasefire. Even then, Bibi Netanyahu defied him. The president demanded Israel permit the entry of food for starving Gazans. Netanyahu played him by admitting trucks packed with food to enter the enclave. But he placed them in a holding pen awaiting Israeli inspection, which takes days. Despite Biden’s ultimatum, Israel continues to prevent food from reaching northern Gaza.
The president of the most powerful nation on earth cannot muster the will to act decisively and put an end to this tragedy. It is a shameful stain on the conscience of every American. During the Holocaust the world stood by while six-million died. In Gaza, the world stood by while nearly 50,000 died.
As human beings, we think of ourselves as concerned for the victims; as empathic and sensitive to tragedy; as ready to do whatever it takes to prevent suffering and comfort the victims. But the truth is different. While individuals and NGOs may act in the ways I mentioned above, nations and international bodies do not. Humanity as a whole does not. Nations pursue their own interests. Rarely do they act out of empathy for others, unless victims are their own citizens.
Thanks @JournalGenocide for this forum and the possibility of contributing to it.
Raz Segal (my honour writing with him) & I try to make our case for the necessary, possibly inevitable new era of Holocaust and genocide studies after Gaza, where atrocities still unbearably unfold https://t.co/SxFRLKo0qW pic.twitter.com/2bqL1Kl0Hp— Luigi Daniele (@luigidaniele10) March 5, 2024
Jews largely reject the claim that the Holocaust is one in a long list of human genocides. For them it is a unique, exceptional event in a long line of immense tragedies to befall the Jewish people. As such an event, some Holocaust historians even argue that it is something more than genocide–an uber-genocide. Its vastness, its methodicalness, its sheer enormity cannot be appropriately compared to any prior or subsequent event. This is a concept I reject, in what follows.
Holocaust exceptionalism serves an important purpose for Jews. We want the world to acknowledge its guilt in permitting the Holocaust to happen; and some of us are willing exploit this guilt to advance our interests.
Yes, religions have interests. In many cases, religious adherents deliberately conflate political interests with their religion. The Judeo-messianist settler movement is an example of this. In their case and that of many Zionists, Jews are not only members of a religion. They profess allegiance to the Jewish people as a nation: Israel. In linking Judaism to Israel, they’ve succeeded in conflating religion and nationalism. That is a toxic brew leading to repeated wars which have killed tens, if not hundreds of millions over centuries. It also promotes anti-Semitism: Israel’s enemies blame Jews for its crimes.
Israel’s apologists also claim a monopoly on genocide. For example, Israel has refused to recognize the Armenian genocide for decades. In part, for fear it will diminish the claim of Holocaust exceptionalism, and its usefulness in pursuit of Israel’s global political interests. The Lobby also denies Palestinians and their allies use of the term to portray the mass slaughter of the Gaza War. Israel’s supporters even claim that there is no genocide, and use of the term devalues the memory of the six-million.
In fact, many survivors including Primo Levi, have leveled criticism of Israel and in some cases divorced themselves from it entirely. Their alienation marks a rejection of Israel’s exploitation of the Holocaust to advance its interests.
Similarly, Yishuv (pre-state) leaders like Ben Gurion, saw the Holocaust as a way of increasing Jewish demographic presence in pre-state Palestine. He needed Jewish bodies to offset the Palestinian majority. He infamously said that if he had a choice between seeing all Holocaust survivors survive and emigrate to foreign countries; or half of them die and the other half emigrate to Palestine–he would choose the latter. In other words, Zionists saw the survivors as a useful card to be played in anticipation of statehood. Not as human beings and suffering victims of Jewish tragedy.
Lessons from the Holocaust for Palestinians
Palestinians must approach the Gaza genocide as Jews have approached the Holocaust. Genocide scholars must include this genocide in their publications and courses. They must study and document it as scholars like Emil Fackenheim, Yehuda Bauer, and David Wyman compiled their exhaustive research on the Holocaust. It must become a recognized field within genocide studies.
Palestinians should create a museum to document the past and ongoing genocide against them in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere. This institution must also include the Nakba and similar historical tragedies within its mission.
Just as Holocaust survivors wrote Yizkor books for their native villages documenting their history, destruction, and the lives of their Jewish inhabitants, Palestinians should compile books of remembrance of their villages, their destruction, and the inhabitants killed and those who survived. The survivors must serve as witness for the victims.
It is a profound irony that most Jews maintain a lingering mistrust and even hatred of Germany and Germans nearly 80 years after the Holocaust; while vast majority of Palestinians do not blame Jews as a group for their suffering. While they may blame Israel and Israelis, they do not believe (as many Israelis do regarding Palestinians), that Jews (including Israelis) bear an eternal hatred toward them.
Palestinian armed resistance is not fueled by hatred, but rather by cold, hard calculation that it is the only way to defend Palestine and obtain national rights. Once those rights are achieved, Palestinians would not have any reason to continue with such violence because again, their quarrel is with Zionism as a political ideology, not Jews.
Most Israelis, on the other hand, believe that Palestinians do have an eternal hatred of Jews. This in turn, fuels the Judeo-messianists who claim Palestinians and Islam must be banished from Israel and their sacred places (i.e. Al Aqsa) destroyed. They exploit sacred Jewish texts in order to justify claims of eternal Jew-hatred.
Israeli politicians, university presidents and religious leaders have invoked the Amalek story, in which the Children of Israel exterminated this tribe, which attacked them as they trekked toward the Promised Land. Palestine haters exploit this ancient story in order to justify inflicting genocide on Palestinians.
Israelis also conflate (purported) Islamic Jew-hatred with historic Christian anti-Semitism, transforming Palestinians, Muslims and Christians into sworn enemies of Israel and Zionism; and potential perpetrators of a second Holocaust targeting Israeli Jews. One recent example is the Zionist claim that the 60 year-0ld Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” signifies planned genocide of Israeli Jews.
We must deny Israel the right to distort the true meaning of the Holocaust. We must deny the claim that it is exceptional and owned solely by Jews and, by implication, Israel.
Victims should not be victims forever. They and those who speak in their names, are not entitled to exploit their victimhood for political motives. They harbor the same hatreds and violent impulses as all human beings. They are not precluded from criticism because of their victimhood. In fact, they are capable of becoming perpetrators of mass slaughter just as their ancestors were victims of it.
Finally, genocides differ solely in context and geography; but they share a human commonality. The Holocaust is neither unique nor exceptional. While it was a Jewish tragedy, it was equally a human tragedy. To the extent we confine it to the latter, we are tribalists denying our connection to humanity.
A group subjected to genocide at the hands of a first set of genocide perpetrators (e.g., Nazis) can later form a second set of genocide perpetrators (e.g., Zionists) just as evil as the first set of genocide perpetrators.
Belief in the impossibility of perpetration of genocide by Zionists is a belief in the racial superiority of Zionists because Zionists are so much better than the rest of the human race that perpetration of genocide is impossible for Zionists.
I have been reading your excellent and informative articles for many years now. That is the main reason none of the developments Middle East come as a surprise … none. Unfortunately fascism in Western nations was dormant and has come alive after the 9/11 attacks. Feeding on endemic racism in European and colonial culture and religion in general. Quite functional of Israel and Netanyahu to equate Palestinian resistance with Al Qaeda terror. The funding of Islamophobia worked effectively as propaganda took hold. This proces is irreversible until a devastating, major war breaks out. All elements are in place, the IP conflict is not a local issue.
The first genocide of the 20th Century was of the Herero and Nama peoples of Namibia by the German colonists. This should not be forgotten
Yes, absolutely. I will add this to the post.
Richard
Thanks for this piece, especially the first third. It captures with eloquence how I understand the Holocaust and its place in Jewish and human history.
best jeff
Hell is breaking loose 🔥🔥
First wave of drones launched by Iran to clutter defense systems … by impact cruise missiles and ballistic missiles will strike Israel …
Iran has launched dozens of drones at Israel; IDF says it aims to intercept them in hours | TOI |
Joe Biden sees opportunity to establish an ad hoc anti-Iran military coalition … downing drones and missiles in defense of the genocidal coalition of Netanyahu of Israel. The states giving support were named as the UK – France – Germany and for its own territory Jordan. I would not be surprised of too The Netherlands gave some support, perhaps just as a liaison officer in the CENTCOM Operations HQ.
The term genocide is controversial and empirical and philosophical. How can one compare horrors and ultimately define genocide as something we agree on formally?People have their opinions. I don’t believe that anyone of sound mind can deny that the Holocaust was a genocide. I believe the Holocaust is one of many genocides, genocides variously defined.The Holocaust, Hitler’s, was exceptional in its character (organization, immensity, depravity). This genocide was not only about the Jewish people, European Jews, though mostly, but others taken up into it as well. This horrific event rightfully also belongs to the whole world, especially the West, to ingest ,to not forget. And as well we deal with the repercussions, reverberations still as with Gaza. There would not be an Israel without the Holocaust many have said. But “never again” is not only for traumatized, militarized Israelis to define and manage. We are back to the question of why Palestinians are paying?
Your list of genocides is important but there is a notable omission: the Roma genocide which was concurrent with the Jewish holocaust. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust says that “between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma and Sinti people were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators,” but research cited by Ian Hancock has put the death toll at about 1.5 million out of a population of maybe two million.