With the rising tide of antisemitism, we have come to believe that the words, “Never Again” have become meaningless. How could it possibly be that some 80 years after the Holocaust, that there is a violent resurgence of Antisemitism? We suffer from this pernicious hatred in the Palestinian territories where authorities incite and school curriculum motivates hate. We feel it on university campuses where our children face faculty who dare call them colonizers and fellow students run boycott campaigns against the Jewish state. And we see the silence and complicity of our political leaders who look away from rallies like Al Quds Day where pro-Palestinian demonstrators call for our destruction.
The more jaded and indifferent we become about renewing our famous call of Never Again, the harder it will become to fight back. As we stand here in Poland to mark the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, our enemies are circling ever closer. They think they smell blood. This week, the greatest exporter of hate and antisemitism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, boldly declared that it would flatten Tel Aviv and Haifa. Words become deeds Holocaust survivors were taught, and those who ignore threats are at the mercy of purveyors of hate.
A confluence of events enabled Hitler, a psychopath who rise to the top of the political elite in Germany. Some blame Germany’s failing economy. Others say that Hitler lifted German pride after its defeat in the First World War and the reparations it was forced to pay the allies. His hatred of the Jewish people played into centuries-old antisemitic canards that empowered him and propelled him to leadership and eventual license to the murder of Six Million Jews, while the rest of the world looked away (sound familiar?).
As we stood on the hallowed grounds of Auschwitz this week, where 1.2 million Jews and some non-Jews were brutally beaten, gassed and burned, we reflected on the indifference and silence that once again stands before us today. We reflected on a world on the brink of disaster as countries like Russia freely invade a democratic country (Ukraine) and brutalize its population. We thought about the danger to the world with a nuclearized Iran, a destabilized Pakistan and North Korea and an expansionist China poised to attack Taiwan.
Instability, fear, poverty and despair drive mass populations into the cold embrace of psychopaths, as was the case in Germany. Add vicious and historic antisemitism to the mix and make it absolutely permissible and you end up with genocide. Sadly, our world hasn’t changed much since the Holocaust and in recent years, the Jewish world and its friends (and we have many non-Jewish allies) are coming to terms with this dire reality. But it’s this reality that should and must embolden us to fight.
Once a year we pause to reflect on Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). But the rest of the year, we must fight back vigorously, passionately and with conviction. Imagine what a Jew must have felt like during the Spanish Inquisition? When she was accused of causing Black Death by poisoning the wells in England? How about the Jew who had to run from angry mobs following Sunday mass, when he was accused of deicide? We cannot imagine how fellow Parisian Jews felt when their hero, Colonel Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of treason and stripped of his medals.
We can never imagine the fear and instability a Jew felt like in those dark days. The difference between now and then is that today the Jewish State has our back.
I stand by the railway tracks at Auschwitz where Jews were offloaded from trains in the middle of the night, separated from their families and gassed and forced into slavery. I speak in the very spot Max Eisen stood and retell his story to my delegation of Canadians and Americans. The heavens open up above. A ray of light breaks the darkness and streaks across the tracks. I smile because we won. Never Again is our battle cry. It’s an action of defiance. We are here. Hitler is not.
National Post
Avi Abraham Benlolo is the founder and chairman of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.
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