THE last thing anyone wants to write in the week we remember the Holocaust is mud-slinging at those who defend human rights. It is quite obvious that all of us would reflect not just on the horror of Nazi genocide against Jews, LGBTQ, Roma, Blacks and other non-Aryan groups, but also the many, many, genocides since, including in Europe. To attack the Irish President, who refuses to be blind to modern-day genocide in Gaza, is, quite frankly, a blatant apologia for the Israeli state and its current genocidal policies. To do that on the back of Holocaust commemoration is perversion of memory.
One of the repeated calls during Holocaust memorials is “Never Again”. This phrase, like the modern imposition of pro-Israeli bumpers on memorialisation, is deeply problematic. In some respects it is sadly not the universal call to vigilance. It is worth examining where that particular phrase, and its interpretation, came from.
Originally used in Israeli Kibbutzim, early-1960s documentaries recording eyewitness testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Nazi concentration camps heard that phrase being used by the survivors who said that such horror must never happen again. By the 1970s it was used by Rabbi Meir Kahane, a militant American rabbi who created the Jewish Defence League and authored a book of the same title. His reasoning was that Never Again meant every, and all, military action against whomsoever might be a threat to the Israeli state. He believed that the passive lack of reaction by Jews to the Nazi state contributed to the murders of six million European Jews.
The phrase gained currency, as did this interpretation of protectionism of the Israeli state. While his fundamental beliefs did not necessarily gain immediate currency, the phrase Never Again did, thereby giving a legitimate framing of this military fundamentalism. This framing has led directly to where we find ourselves today. Never Again has become a cloak of excuse for Zionist Israeli murder and ethnic cleansing.
International shame for doing little to nothing to protect European Jewry in the 1930s and 40s and a recognition that centuries of antisemitic pogroms contributed directly to the Holocaust have facilitated Israel getting away with murder. They have allowed for a space to be created where calling out genocide can be viewed as antisemitic and leads to an environment where Michael D. Higgins, one of the globe’s most prominent peace activists, to be impugned for doing just that.
The truth is, for those of us with goodwill have used the phrase in a universal sense Never again is meant to mean that we need to uphold the international agreed norms that forbid ethnic cleansing anywhere and everywhere. But when we know its roots we can see how something so well-meaning can become cynically manipulated.
Meanwhile, time is short for Gaza. If Palestinians are not to be subject to an Israeli/US final solution, Europe, Africa and South America need to start building hospitals, churches, schools and homes on the sites being eyed up for seaside resorts for playboy apologists. There needs to be tonnes of concrete poured and vast acreage of fields planted in the weeks ahead. The ethnic cleansers have their plans made and feel they are in touching distance.
International strength needs to tell them: Never Again.
