It’s not every day that you get to have lunch with a Holocaust survivor.
It’s also not every day that you have lunch with a Holocaust survivor while watching news coverage of his people being attacked (yet again) by antisemites. But that’s what happened recently. Mr. Abrams, a 90-something Jewish man, is a survivor of multiple Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald and Auschwitz, where his parents and brother were murdered. As we sat in his living room, eating our lunch, we watched as sickening images of the war in Israel flashed across the screen. His face, etched with lines, grimaced at what he saw. “How can they do this to people?” he said aloud. “They’re doing the same thing the Nazis did. It never changes.” Holocaust analogies are dangerous things, because they trivialize the true Holocaust that resulted in the murder of six million Jewish people. But what happened in Israel is worthy of such comparison. In other words, Mr. Abrams is right. On October 7 the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas launched a brutal assault on Israel, killing more than 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians. The chilling reality is that not since the Holocaust have so many Jewish people been killed in a single day. Even more chilling, though, is the celebratory response many have had to Hamas’ slaughter of Jewish people. Pro-Hamas rallies have taken place in New York, Paris and London. At Harvard, 30 student groups sponsored a letter stating that Israel is “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” And on social media, the ignorance and venom abound even more than usual, with people posting vile remarks in celebration of Israeli blood. Make no mistake, these rallies, that letter, those social media posts —none of them are about justice or peace; they’re pure, unadulterated antisemitic statements. They are saying loud and clear, “We hate Jews.” Hamas itself is explicit about this. Consider statements from the Hamas Covenant, adopted on August 18, 1988. They admit that their struggle is not against Israel as a state; rather, “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” Their goal is not merely the subjugation of the Jewish people, but their annihilation. The Hamas Covenant, quoting from the Quran, states: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews. When the Jew will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” Hamas declares that it does not want peace; they want jihad (holy war). “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad,” they write. “Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” The world must take Hamas seriously. During the past few weeks, we have seen that Hamas certainly takes themselves seriously. Holocaust is their aim. Don’t believe it? Just look at the CT scan that shows the remains of a parent and child, who were bound together before being burned alive. Just look at the picture of a bloodied Jewish toddler, butchered by a Hamas terrorist in its bedroom. Just look at the footage of Jewish women being corralled into a vehicle, their pants bearing the bloody evidence of recent rape. Many have wondered how they would respond if faced with another Holocaust. The celebratory response to Hamas’ butchering of Jewish innocents gives us a clear answer: we’ll acquiesce to it. If we will not speak out against the rape of Jewish women in their homes... If we will not protest the slaughter of Jewish babies in their cribs... If we will justify the kidnapping, binding and burning alive of Jewish teenagers... Then let us stop our hypocritical calls for social justice. Let us desist from our alleged fight for human rights. Let us quiet our calls for Never Again. Because we don’t mean it.
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AuthorTy Perry is a writer based in metro-Detroit. Archives
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