Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Jan. 26, 2025
“… these commemorations are not assisting in educating the world about where tolerance of Jew-hatred leads.”
In the 20 years since it was created by a vote in the U.N. General Assembly in 2005, International Holocaust Remembrance Day has become a staple of the world community’s calendar. It has even been embraced by the organized Jewish world, which is always eager for acceptance from established institutions. It was established even though the Jewish world already recognized a Holocaust day—Yom Hashoah—observed in the spring a week before Israel’s memorial and independence days. More than 15 months after Oct. 7, 2023, it’s time to reassess that decision.
Why? Shouldn’t we encourage more Holocaust commemoration and education programs? Doesn’t the creation of a day set aside by the world for remembering the slaughter of 6 million Jews give this event the recognition it deserves, as well as making it less likely that the horror of the Shoah will be repeated?
As it turns out, the resounding answer is an emphatic “no.”
The leaders of the same international community that reacted with indifference, if not support, for the mass murder and atrocities committed against Jews during the border infiltration and ensuing murderous assault on southern Israel by Hamas terrorists and other Palestinians on Oct. 7, 2023, will dutifully line up on Jan. 27 to take part in these commemorations. They will say how horrible the Holocaust was. Some of them will use the familiar refrain of “never again.” In doing so, they will count themselves as the sort of responsible, compassionate and high-minded people who deserve not only to control powerful international institutions like the United Nations and its manifold agencies but also to tell the rest of us how to think and live.
This is just another example of how much of the world likes dead Jews but is utterly intolerant of live ones, who are prepared to fight for their rights and their existence.
As proof of that, in many of these ceremonies, there will be not a word said about the Nazis of our own day who wish to fulfill Adolf Hitler’s goal of the genocide of the Jews. And by that, I don’t mean the hateful though small, isolated and politically powerless neo-Nazis that dwell in the fever swamps of the far right in Western societies.
Instead, I’m referring to Hamas and other Islamist terror groups that have as their goal the destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet and the genocide of the more than 7 million Jews who live there. Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7 were part of an attempt to realize that genocidal goal….SOURCE