It is a common adage that history always repeats itself… Unfortunately, the Holocaust is no longer confined to history, but still exists in the present. What is happening in Gaza these days is not just killing, it is a planned genocide of Palestinians. Thus, people cannot say, ‘Never again’ about the Holocaust any longer.
Many misleading concepts of the Holocaust exist, maybe because a large part of this history has been removed. This then raises the question of what exactly is the holocaust. Why did it happen, and how did it happen?
The word Holocaust derives from the Greek word ‘holokauston’ which means, ‘totally burned’. The Holocaust is the extreme example of anti-Semitism, which led to the murder of 6 million Jews in concentration camps by Hitler and his Nazis during WW-II.
The Holocaust started in 1933 when Adolf Hitler became the leader of Germany and ended in 1945 when Nazi Germany lost WW-II. The Nazis considered Germany to be a superior nation and justified the killing of Jews by calling them an ‘evil’ or ‘low’ race. Sadly, this is the case with Israel now, which believes that it owns this land, and is thus allowed to kill Palestinians.
After WW-II started, Hitler ordered all Jews to wear a yellow Star of David so the Nazis could identify the Jews easily. The Jews were prevented from acquiring citizenship and were not allowed to marry Germans. All this is being repeated in Palestine where Palestinians have to carry their citizenship cards and their women are forcefully injected with birth control.
Anti-Semitism did not start with Hitler; it already existed in history. The term anti-Semitism was created by the German journalist Wilhelm Marr in 1879, but this sentiment was at its peak during the draconian Nazi regime.
In history, aggression towards Jews existed even before the Holocaust occurred. For instance, when in ancient times, the Romans destroyed Jewish temples in Jerusalem and forced them to undertake the ‘exodus’ and to leave the land.
The Nazis considered Germany to be a superior nation and justified the killing of Jews by calling them an ‘evil’ or ‘low’ race. Sadly, this is the case with Israel now, which believes that it owns this land, and is thus allowed to kill Palestinians
Jews migrated to Europe after their forced exile by the Romans. As the centuries passed, an organised movement known as ‘Zionism’ emerged, which aimed to create a separate homeland for Jews.
After WW-I, Great Britain took control of Palestine by ending the 400-year Ottoman Empire’s rule. The British government signed the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which gave British support to the Zionist cause for a separate homeland for Jews in Palestine. Many survivors of the Holocaust, then, chose to seek refuge in Palestine and became part of the Zionist movement once World War-II ended.
Indigenous Palestinians, however, did not accept Zionism, and conflicts arose between the locals and the immigrating Jews. The UN, meanwhile, approved a plan for the partition of Palestine in 1947, and finally in May 1948, Israel became an independent state.
These events highlight that Israel’s creation owes a lot to the Holocaust. However, violence continues to plague this place because Jerusalem is equally sacred for both Muslims and Jews.
Ideologically there are many similarities between the Nazi regime and the present atrocities of the Israeli state. The Germans’ dream of ‘lebensraum’ (living space), for instance, envisioned expanding the German territory to increase living space for their superior Aryan race, which is why they took over Europe and killed many European Jews.
Israel is adopting a similar policy, and it is forcing Palestinians out of their homes in order to create ‘Greater Israel’. This suggests that Israel is on a mission to regain all Palestinian territory. If Israelis truly wanted to settle this conflict, they would not have illegally occupied this land.
Israel also prevents Palestinian refugees from returning because it is aware that if Palestinians become a majority, they will erode the ‘Jewish’ nature of Israel. This shows Israel is not serious in ending the conflict.
It thus becomes evident that Israel’s present brutality is highly reminiscent of the Nazi onslaught against European Jews. The violence Nazi Germany released on Jews in the 1930s and in the 1940s is being repeated in the oppression of the Palestinians, and sadly, the US is backing all of this.
A third person has no right to decide the capital of another country. The shifting of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem has thus exposed America’s bias in the conflict. We must, therefore, condemn this act and the acts of brutality occurring in Gaza. We can no longer stay silent.
Many Jewish armed groups perpetrated violence against Palestinians at the time of Israel’s creation, and forced nearly 400,000 Palestinians to leave their homeland. It is thus highly ironic that a state borne out of terrorism and violence accuses oppressed communities of ‘terrorism’.
Israeli and Palestinian violence is not at a comparable level. Most Palestinian protestors are unarmed and it is highly shocking that they are still blamed for being killed at the hands of Israeli armed forces. It is important to question why Israelis feel threatened by Palestinians, even when they are fully armed and the Palestinians are not.
Middle Eastern monarchs and dictators, moreover, are silent because they have become the slaves of Western powers. Their hands are red with the blood of innocents, for it is a fact that those who passively accept violence are as much responsible for it as those who actually commit it.
The opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem thus appeared to be a celebration of the violence occurring on the Gaza border. However, we must derive a lesson from the previous Holocaust and make ourselves capable enough to say ‘never again’ to this brutality.
The writer is a recent graduate of Mass Communication from University of the Punjab Lahore and is interested in lifestyle, culture, arts and history. She can be reached at [email protected].Twitter: @Arshiayzahid
Published in Daily Times, June 4th 2018.