Approaching never again, again
OpinionGuest columnist

Approaching never again, again

The only thing sadder than observing a day of remembrance for the genocide of one’s people is observing it while unimaginably being accused of the very crime itself.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kyiv, Ukraine, January 2018. Photo by U.S. Embassy Kyiv Ukraine, courtesy of flickr.com
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kyiv, Ukraine, January 2018. Photo by U.S. Embassy Kyiv Ukraine, courtesy of flickr.com

This week the world observed International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is a holiday not without its own issues, instated less than 20 years ago in 2005 (and 56 years after Yom HaShoah) by the United Nations, which is always comically late to the game on all things factual or Jew- related. The 27th of January was specifically selected to commemorate the Allies’ liberation of Auschwitz in order to portray these nations as more heroic, and in truth, to pacify guilt after such unforgivable chosen ignorance and abandonment of Jews in their time of need. But the day exists all the same, ideally as an annual reminder of the worst of humanity’s past, but unfortunately also as a warning of what still lurks today, and a symbol of how too many try to hijack history.

The Holocaust is globally known, and also denied, as the single most defining rise of antisemitism and death of Jews, without any event coming anywhere close in vicious and intentional savagery … until Oct. 7. It is literally beyond belief that global Holocaust survivors had to witness another attempted genocide within their lifetimes, and it is the height of surreality that some had to become survivors of both.

The only thing sadder than observing a day of remembrance for the genocide of one’s people, in the wake of another attempted genocide, is observing it while unimaginably being accused of the very crime itself.

Welcome to the sick reality of Holocaust inversion: using a term conceived by a Jew, to describe the mass extermination of Jews, against Jews today, is nothing short of an absolutely conscious decision and malicious calculation to retraumatize.

Everyone has heard at least once the grotesque allegations that many Jews hear weekly, if not daily: Jews are Nazis, Israel is committing
genocide by ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population, Gazans are being held in at best a ghetto like Warsaw — but additionally an actual concentration camp, and also exactly the same horror as Auschwitz itself.

Why choose these terms specifically?

It is not simply because genocide is the worst thing that one can do, and Nazis are the worst thing that one can be. It is because some of the worst crimes in modern human history are also inextricably tied to Jewish history. Never underestimate the absolute intention and gleeful thrill of deliberately inflicting greater present pain on Jews by co-opting and warping the pain of their past. The cherry on top for these quintessential antisemites is watching Jews being forced to defend themselves, their humanity and overall reality against horrific accusations. To be a disingenuous distraction, waste of time and energy drain, is pure victory in itself.

This should be abhorrent enough on its own, but there is more intentional malevolence behind this perversion of history and morality than just deranged spite: Comparing Jews to Nazis lays the framework for first rationality of dehumanization and then acceptability of destruction.
The tactic is unfortunately working.

Most commonly seen among the general population is passive dehumanization. No one would ever second-guess any other country for needing to eliminate threats of terrorism despite the undesirable consequence of civilian casualties. Every other nation would be granted the acknowledgment that its own well-being would depend on the utter eradication of all terrorists next to them and would also be worth the effort. However, the world doesn’t see Israel as worthy of well-being and doesn’t value the lives of its citizens as full humans, so it doesn’t value its necessary eradication of terror over casualties.

We see a sense of this internationally as well. The West has become unnervingly lax on acceptable antisemitism, due to the same dark truth: There is no reason to take implied or even literal violence seriously when you don’t take the well-being of Jews seriously. Therefore, it is now acceptable to yell “death to Jews” in the street, to harass, taunt and block Jews from public areas and roads, and repeatedly threaten Jewish spaces. With this as the new standard, it comes as no surprise that assault and murder of Jews has new room to increase as well — all while progressive nations sit back in seeming moral paralysis, insisting through top-notch gaslighting that the most obviously reprehensible still requires context.

The unfortunate itching of history to repeat itself gravely proves that Holocaust education has not been globally successful, assuming it has been attempted at all. For too many that even experienced any education, it appears to have only been a memorization of numbers (12 years of Hitler’s regime, 6 million dead Jews) while the crucial takeaways of why and how have been lost. As a result, we have the modern phenomenon of diluting the grave concept of Nazism into anyone who disagrees with the perpetually offended. Further, it is shallowly assumed that such horrific hate can only be a manifestation of a single political side, with those on the opposing side oblivious to the transformation of themselves into that which they live to despise. Thus, among everything else the past year-and-a-half, we’ve seen Palestinian flags flown by Auschwitz, Anne Frank’s memorial defaced and then hidden to fend off future defacement, and Western youth calling for the same global genocide that their grandparents likely fought against.

What we can take away from both past and recent history is that when the conditions are right, the sentiment hasn’t necessarily changed; rather, the resentment has intensified now that Jews are not sitting ducks without a nation and army this time around.

The Dara Horn quote that “people love dead Jews” could not be any more appropriate in this age. The only genuinely politically savory Jews are the ones to be pitied and forgotten in death, as they are the ones who no longer pose a nuisance, and certainly not the ones who both dare to exist and are capable of fighting back. It bothers too many to the core that we choose to keep surviving, and worse, solidify our survival through our own defended nation.

Antisemitism hasn’t changed over the decades, or millennia, but fortunately neither has our resilience. What has changed is our fortified strength of community and resources, so we — and not just the bigotry of others — decide our future now. It’s a good thing, too, because if there’s one basic truth that we have sadly learned multiple times over the past century, it is that most of the world is at very best apathetic to a fault and will go out of its way to do nothing to help, so it’s truly on Israel and Jews to defend ourselves — which, despite both the age-old and current disdain, is exactly what we will keep doing.

“Never again” isn’t just a nice little slogan for hypocritical world leaders to mindlessly say or parasitic movements to cringingly appropriate … we actually mean it. Israel may not have been created because of the Holocaust, but the Holocaust showed the need for Israel, and because of Israel, we won’t have to face one again. And much to the dismay of all our timeless naysayers and bigots, Jews will sustain the ultimate vindication, continuing to not only survive but absolutely thrive, just as we always have. PJC

Sarah Kendis is a musician living in Pittsburgh.

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