Second Holocaust

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The notion of a Second Holocaust [lower-alpha 1] is an assertion that the Holocaust or a similar event is recurring or will recur. It is often used to discuss real or perceived threats to the State of Israel, the Jewish people, or the Jewish way of life.

Contents

Examples

Existential threats to the State of Israel

Threats to Israel's security have often been exagerated as a potential "second Holocaust". [1] [2] During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, it was feared that defeat in the war would mean a second genocide of Jews, this time at the hands of Arab armies. These fears were based on antisemitism in the Arab world, the fact that Arab leaders such as Amin al-Husseini were providing shelter to Nazi war criminals and had publicly supported the holocaust during World War 2, many Israelis having lost relatives in the Holocaust, and the temporal proximity of the last genocide. The Arabs did not face a comparable existential threat, and the lack of motivation of Arab armies contributed to defeat in the war. [3] [4] [5] The Six-Day War also led Israelis to fear another Holocaust. [6] [1]

Belief that Jews are threatened by another existential event, like the Holocaust, is an important element in support for the Israeli state and its military. [1] [7] For example, in 1987, Yitzhak Rabin opined that "In every generation, they try to destroy us" (quoting from the Passover Haggadah) and therefore the Holocaust could happen again. [7] Before he came to power, Menachem Begin compared accepting reparations from Germany to allowing "another Holocaust". [8] Before the 1982 Lebanon war, Begin told his cabinet: "Believe me, the alternative to this is Treblinka, and we have decided that there will not be another Treblinka". He also justified Operation Opera, the 1981 bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor, by stating that by ordering the strike he had prevented another Holocaust. [1] [9]

Mike Pence, former Vice President of the United States, said in 2019 that "The Iranian regime openly advocates another Holocaust and seeks the means to achieve it", referring to the Iranian nuclear program. [10]

This tendency has been criticized by some Israelis. [7] For example, in 2017 President Reuven Rivlin said that he disagreed with Begin's invocation of "another Treblinka": "According to this approach, the justification for the existence of the State of Israel is the prevention of the next Holocaust. Every threat is a threat to survival, every Israel-hating leader is Hitler ... any criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitism." He said that the approach was "fundamentally wrong" and "dangerous". [11]

The 2023 Hamas attack on Israel has been likened to events of the Holocaust by many Israel Jews, including Holocaust survivors, as well as world leaders such as the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the American president Joe Biden. [12] [13]

One-state solution

Writing on Arutz Sheva , Steven Plaut referred to the one-state solution as the "Rwanda Solution", and wrote that the implementation of a one-state solution in which a Palestinian majority would rule over a Jewish minority would eventually lead to a "new Holocaust". [14]

Antisemitism

Some Holocaust survivors have expressed fear that rising antisemitism in the 21st century could lead to another Holocaust. [15] Israel Meir Lau, former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel and a Holocaust survivor, said that while another Holocaust was possible, "this time, the fact that we have a Jewish state that deters Israel's haters, the fact that we have the Israel Defense Forces, and the fact that we have won wars decisively, makes things starkly different". [16]

According to one survey, 58% of Americans believe something like the Holocaust could happen again. [15]

Claims that Palestinians are committing genocide

A 2009 law journal article by Israeli-American human rights lawyer Justus Weiner and Israeli-American law professor Avi Bell argued that Hamas attacks against Israelis met the definition of the crime of genocide in the Genocide Convention. [17] In 2023, a letter signed by over 100 international law experts argued that the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel "most probably constitute[s] an international crime of genocide, proscribed by the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court". [18] [19] Its signatories included Irwin Cotler, former Attorney-General of Canada; the organiser of the letter was Dan Eldad, former acting State Attorney of Israel. [18] The same argument was made by Jens David Ohlin, dean of Cornell Law School, in a post on the Opinio Juris group blog. [20]

In his 2009 book on genocide, Worse than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity, Harvard professor Daniel Goldhagen argues that Palestinian suicide attacks should be called "genocide bombings", and their perpetrators "genocide bombers". [21] [22] The coining of the label "genocide bombing" is sometimes attributed to Irwin Cotler, in remarks he made in the Canadian Parliament in 2002; [23] [24] however, the phrase was used by the UK's ambassador, Stephen Gommersall, during an April 1996 meeting of the UN Security Council. [25] Other supporters of the use of the "genocide bombing" phrase have included the American political scientist R. J. Rummel, [26] and Arnold Beichman. [27]

Jewish intermarriage

In 2019, Israeli education minister Rafi Peretz compared Jewish intermarriage in the United States to a "second Holocaust". [28] At the time, fifty-eight percent of married American Jews had non-Jewish spouses. Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that Peretz' remark "trivializes the Shoah [Holocaust]". [29]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ (Hebrew: השואה השנײה, romanized: HaShoah HaShniyah) or "Another Holocaust" (Hebrew: שואה נוספת, romanized: Shoah Nosephet)

Related Research Articles

Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a fabrication or exaggeration. Holocaust denial includes making one or more of the following false claims:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yad Vashem</span> Israels official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust

Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; echoing the stories of the survivors; honoring Jews who fought against their Nazi oppressors and gentiles who selflessly aided Jews in need; and researching the phenomenon of the Holocaust in particular and genocide in general, with the aim of avoiding such events in the future. Yad Vashem's vision, as stated on its website, is: "To lead the documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust, and to convey the chronicles of this singular Jewish and human event to every person in Israel, to the Jewish people, and to every significant and relevant audience worldwide."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Goldhagen</span> American author and academic (born 1959)

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is an American author, and former associate professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two books about the Holocaust: Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996), and A Moral Reckoning (2002). He is also the author of Worse Than War (2009), which examines the phenomenon of genocide, and The Devil That Never Dies (2013), in which he traces a worldwide rise in virulent antisemitism.

This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust, including prominent primary sources, historical studies, notable survivor accounts and autobiographies, as well as other documentation and further hypotheses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yehuda Bauer</span> Israeli historian of the Holocaust (1926–2024)

Yehuda Bauer was a Czech-born Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He was a professor of Holocaust studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher R. Browning</span> American historian of the Holocaust

Christopher Robert Browning is an American historian and is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). A specialist on the Holocaust, Browning is known for his work documenting the Final Solution, the behavior of those implementing Nazi policies, and the use of survivor testimony. He is the author of nine books, including Ordinary Men (1992) and The Origins of the Final Solution (2004).

Names of the Holocaust vary based on context. "The Holocaust" is the name commonly applied in English since the mid-1940s to the systematic extermination of six million Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II.

<i>Hitlers Willing Executioners</i> Book by Daniel Goldhagen

Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust is a 1996 book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen, in which he argues collective guilt, that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism" in German political culture which had developed in the preceding centuries. Goldhagen argues that eliminationist antisemitism was the cornerstone of German national identity, was unique to Germany, and because of it ordinary German conscripts killed Jews willingly. Goldhagen asserts that this mentality grew out of medieval attitudes rooted in religion and was later secularized.

Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accepted definition of the term, and it has been applied variously to Jews who survived the war in German-occupied Europe or other Axis territories, as well as to those who fled to Allied and neutral countries before or during the war. In some cases, non-Jews who also experienced collective persecution under the Nazi regime are considered Holocaust survivors as well. The definition has evolved over time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holocaust trains</span> Railway transports used in Nazi Germany

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aftermath of the Holocaust</span>

The Holocaust had a deep effect on society both in Europe and the rest of the world, and today its consequences are still being felt, both by children and adults whose ancestors were victims of this genocide.

Holocaust trivialization refers to any comparison or analogy that diminishes the scale and severity of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. The Wiesel Commission defined trivialization as the abusive use of comparisons with the aim of minimizing the Holocaust and banalizing its atrocities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman Finkelstein</span> American political scientist (born 1953)

Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist and activist. His primary fields of research are the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

<i>Grossaktion</i> Warsaw Nazi operation to deport and murder Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII

The Grossaktion Warsaw was the Nazi code name for the deportation and mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto during the summer of 1942, beginning on 22 July. During the Grossaktion, Jews were terrorized in daily round-ups, marched through the ghetto, and assembled at the Umschlagplatz station square for what was called in the Nazi euphemistic jargon "resettlement to the East". From there, they were sent aboard overcrowded Holocaust trains to the extermination camp in Treblinka.

Eliminationism is the belief that a social group is, in the words of Oklahoma City University School of Law professor Phyllis E. Bernard, "a cancer on the body politic that must be excised—either by separation from the public at large, through censorship or by outright extermination—in order to protect the purity of the nation."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racism in the State of Palestine</span>

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USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust a compelling voice for education and action. It was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing his Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. In January 2006, the foundation partnered with and relocated to the University of Southern California (USC) and was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. In March 2019, the institute opened their new global headquarters on USC's campus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany</span>

Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, sometimes called Holocaust inversion, occur frequently in the political discourse of anti-Zionism. Given the legacy of the Holocaust, the legitimacy of and intent behind these accusations are a matter of debate, particularly with regard to their potential nature as a manifestation of antisemitism. Historically, figures like British historian Arnold J. Toynbee have drawn parallels or alleged a relationship between Zionism and Nazism; British professor David Feldman suggests that these comparisons are often rhetorical tools without specific antisemitic intent. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy argues that such comparisons not only lack historical and moral equivalence, but also risk inciting anti-Jewish sentiment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Never again</span> Phrase associated with the Holocaust and other genocides

"Never again" is a phrase or slogan which is associated with the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides. The slogan was used by liberated prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp to denounce fascism. It was popularized by Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane in his 1971 book, Never Again! A Program for Survival.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Lustick, Ian S. (2019). Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 43. ISBN   978-0-8122-9681-5.
  2. ↑ Peleg, Ilan (2019). Victimhood Discourse in Contemporary Israel. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 63, 95–96. ISBN   978-1-4985-5351-3.
  3. ↑ "Professor pens book on WWII veterans' efforts to prevent a second Holocaust | Penn State University". news.psu.edu. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
  4. ↑ Morris, Benny (2008). 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. Yale University Press. p. 198. ISBN   978-0-300-14524-3.
  5. ↑ Yablonka, Hanna (2016). Survivors of the Holocaust: Israel after the War. Springer. p. 122. ISBN   978-1-349-14152-4.
  6. ↑ Brenner, Reeve Robert (2014). The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors. Transaction Publishers. pp. 8–9. ISBN   978-1-4128-5315-6.
  7. 1 2 3 Levin, Irene (2016). The Holocaust as Active Memory: The Past in the Present. Routledge. pp. 97–98. ISBN   978-1-317-02866-6.
  8. ↑ Segev, Tom (2019). The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN   978-0-8090-8579-8.
  9. ↑ "PM: Israel ready to defend against another Holocaust". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 2013-06-13. Retrieved 2024-08-07.
  10. ↑ "Pence accuses Iran of pursuing 'another Holocaust,' lashes out at allies". NBC News. Retrieved 8 May 2020.
  11. ↑ "Tel Aviv Diary: Two very different takes on what the Holocaust means today". Newsweek . 24 April 2017. Retrieved 8 May 2020.
  12. ↑ "Hamas attack evokes memories of the Holocaust for many Jews". NBC News. 2023-10-20. Retrieved 2023-10-24.
  13. ↑ "A 'Zionist in my heart': Biden's devotion to Israel faces a new test". AP News. 2023-10-12. Retrieved 2023-10-24.
  14. ↑ Steven Plaut, "One State Solution vs Two-State Solution?," Arutz Sheva (3/3/2008). Retrieved 2013-12-17.
  15. 1 2 "Survivors, scholars say threat of another Holocaust is not to be ignored". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 8 May 2020.
  16. ↑ Greenwood, Hanan (23 January 2020). "Another Holocaust is possible, warns former chief rabbi". Israel Hayom . Retrieved 8 May 2020.
  17. ↑ Weiner, Justus Reid; Bell, Avi (2009–2010). "The Gaza War of 2009: Applying International Humanitarian Law to Israel and Hamas". San Diego International Law Journal. 11 (5): 5–42.
  18. 1 2 Winer, Stuart (15 October 2023). "Hamas actions are war crimes, could constitute genocide – international law experts". Times of Israel . Retrieved 2023-10-16.
  19. ↑ Sokol, Sam (Oct 16, 2023). "Deadly Hamas Rampage Constitutes 'International Crime of Genocide,' Hundreds of Legal Experts Say". Haaretz. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
  20. ↑ Ohlin, Jens David (2023-10-12). "International Criminal Law Analysis of the Situation in Israel". Opinio Juris. Retrieved 2023-10-16.
  21. ↑ Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah (2010-01-21). Worse Than War: Genocide, eliminationism and the ongoing assault on humanity. Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN   978-0-7481-1586-0.
  22. ↑ Pindar, Ian (2010-02-06). "Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-10-18.
  23. ↑ Radler, Melissa (2002-09-25). "STATESIDE: News from Jewish America". The Jerusalem Post . Archived from the original on 2002-09-25.
  24. ↑ "Debates (Hansard) No. 208 - June 18, 2002 (37-1)". House of Commons of Canada. June 18, 2002. Retrieved 2023-10-18. ...this is not a suicide bombing as much as it is a genocidal bombing where the terrorists, by their own sacred covenant, intend the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they may be.

    This is murder for the sake of murder, terrorism for the sake of terrorism, motivated by the notion that, as the terrorists themselves have put it, 'the weakness of the Jews is that they love life too much'. So that the terrorists celebrate the killing as they glorify the genocidal bombing...
  25. ↑ "SECURITY COUNCIL MEETS IN RESPONSE TO SECURITY MEASURES IMPOSED BY ISRAEL ON WEST BANK, GAZA". press.un.org. 15 April 1996. Retrieved 2023-10-18. [Israel] had the right to protect its citizens against Hamas genocide bombings.
  26. ↑ "Judaicide". The Forward. 2005-06-10. Retrieved 2023-10-18.
  27. ↑ Beichman, Arnold (April 23, 2004). "Targets". The Washington Times . Retrieved 2023-10-18.
  28. ↑ "Israel's education minister: Intermarriage among US Jews 'like second Holocaust'". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 6 May 2020.
  29. ↑ Beauchamp, Zack (10 July 2019). "Israeli minister says US Jews marrying non-Jews is 'like a second Holocaust'". Vox. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
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