The Hostage Holocaust

Hearing what few facts have emerged about the state of the hostages after more than 100 days of the most evil torture, which is beyond our imaginations, who cannot grieve? What will we say on Holocaust Remembrance Day?

While the world thinks it appropriate to criminally charge Israel for committing genocide in its defense against the clear genocide of Hamas and the other terrorist states, especially a soon to be nuclear Iran, we are watching with concern the moral confusion of the coming International Holocaust Commemoration Day in late January

At the same time, any thinking and feeling Jew must be grieving daily the physical, mental, and sexual abuse of the hostages somewhere deep in the tunnels.

According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia of the United Sates Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933–1945.”

In five books and dozens of essays, I disagree, and argue that the Holocaust is continuing. I make this explicit in my 2003 novel, The Second Catastrophe: A Novel About a Book and its Author, and then attempt, in my subsequent books, Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed and The Ideological Path to Submission, to argue that widespread tolerance of evil (what I term the ideology of Tolerism) and submission to leftist and Islamist values have robbed of us of our moral compass

And here we are today:

Firstly, our homeland Israel is under criminal indictment at The Hague in a clear inversion of morality for being genocidal in our fight against clear genocidal steps by our enemies.

Secondly, we watch the world pretend to commemorate the Shoah in its International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which never mentions the word “Israel” as defender against a second Shoah.

Thirdly, that commemoration is infused with moral and cultural relativism in this “woke” western world, where young people march calling for genocide against Israel, and perhaps all Jews, and universities are generally now factories to promote antisemitism.

Fourthly, as I shall argue, we are now witnessing a Hostage Holocaust.

The last time that I looked, the Holocaust Centre of Toronto stated in its Mandate that “It is our responsibility to educate the community at large to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust will be learned.”

In its statement of Purpose, it states: “ As custodians of memory, we must dedicate ourselves to preserving the past and educating future generations. Only through education and remembrance can we safeguard the lessons of the Holocaust, for it is clear that they have not yet been learned.”

So, the question is: what are the lessons of the Holocaust that our Holocaust commemoration centres are teaching? The Toronto Holocaust Education website, which does not mention the word “Israel” even once, goes on to explain: “It is in the ways in which we pay tribute to memory that we truly define ourselves, for it is in forgetfulness and indifference that hate and destruction triumph.”

Two comments: Firstly, why do we assume the lessons are clear, and not openly discuss them? Secondly, this statement alleges that we “define ourselves” primarily in giving “tribute to memory” and then alleges that one lesson appears to be that it is in “forgetfulness and indifference that hate and destruction triumph”.

While there is much truth to that, I would suggest that there are a host of other lessons that we better be imparting. Surely, the antipathy to Israel and Jews worldwide today is not based on “forgetfulness and indifference” but something more ominous.

Many Holocaust educators follow curriculum ideas from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in its “Teaching About the Holocaust: A Resource for Educators, “(t)he Holocaust calls into question our most basic assumptions about human nature, modern society, social responsibility, and global citizenship.” I certainly agree with that. But then it goes on to state:

“The study of the Holocaust assists students in developing an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping in any society. It helps students develop an awareness of the value of pluralism, and encourages tolerance of diversity in a multicultural society.”

I am not happy, however, when I read that Holocaust Education now has a major objective of “promoting the value of pluralism, and …tolerance of diversity in a multicultural society.” Let me explain why.

Some years ago, I watched a fine series on the Holocaust by the American network, Public Broadcasting System. As part of the series, they assembled a group of high school students who not only watched the series’ episodes, but went on a trip to tour Auschwitz. Then, at the end of the series, the students were filmed, discussing what they had learned. One young man, quite typical of the rest, was clear that he had learned that we must all be free of “discrimination” and “racism”, and he vowed to be more welcoming to Muslim immigrants.

So it was made clear to the viewer. The Holocaust now stands for the principle of being tolerant and non-discriminatory. We, of course, are now entering the end-game of those who have quite successfully hijacked the moral of the Holocaust story. In a world of moral and cultural relativism, where “tolerance” is the only enduring value, we Jews are participating in a fraudulent and reprehensible misuse of History – a misuse which results in the new villains being precisely those Jews and Christians who adopt religious values to judge human behaviour, and seek to discriminate between good and evil, and the new heroes being Muslim victims of criticism. (Criticism, not terrorism, mind you. The Jews are the victims of Muslim terrorism, ed.)

Moreover, those who support the Jewish homeland in Israel are also cast as villains, since Israel (as viewed by the United Nations General Assembly et al.) is guilty of humiliating and offending Muslims everywhere by its lack of tolerance towards those who want to destroy it.

In a world that expresses more concerns about Israel erecting a security fence to protect civilians than about the intentional targeting of those civilians, and obscures the fact that there would be no checkpoints and no fences if the Palestinian Arabs would give up their fantasy of ejecting the Jewish state from the Middle East, we are faced with the need to examine what has gone wrong with our Holocaust commemoration.

For it is my argument that Holocaust commemoration has been willingly subverted by well-meaning liberal Jews into a movement to deny Jewish values in favour of the new relativist and tolerant values that are weakening the Western World’s resolve to defend itself and its freedoms against the forces of Islamofascism. In part, liberals fear that they shall be accused of “using” the memory of the Holocaust for contemporary ideological purposes – in this case, support of the state of Israel – but what they fail to understand is that all history is interpreted according to some current ideology, and the ideology of Tolerance is a problematic lens for viewing the moral of the Holocaust – since it does little for the cause of maintenance of Jewish freedoms.

I see a distinction between Jewish values and the values existing today in the secular Western World. The fact that such a view is not shared by all Jews is, in my opinion, one of the tragedies of modern Jewish life. For most Jews view ourselves as the descendants of those who entered into a covenant with G-d at Mount Sinai to accept certain laws and moral values, sometimes summarized as ethical monotheism. But unlike proselytizing religions like Christianity and Islam, we accepted certain laws as our obligation only, as a way to bring a Tikkun Olam, a repair of the universe, necessary after the fall of Adam and Eve.

Thus accepting a role to act as a “light unto the nations”, did not involve any moral superiority as such, but it did carry with it the moral judgment that we expected righteous non-Jews to live by the seven Noahite Laws – with respect to 1) idolatry; 2) blasphemy; 3) homicide; 4) incest and adultery; 5) robbery; 6) eating the flesh of a live creature; and 7) establishing a system of justice.

Note that “tolerance” and “respect for diversity” are nowhere found in this list. And note, that the Nazis in the Holocaust quite clearly breached the Noahite laws pertaining to idolatry, blasphemy, homicide, robbery and a system of justice. Accordingly, an important lesson of the Holocaust is to judge adversely any people emulating the Nazi rejection of these fundamental Noahite principles. Moral relativism, with its inherent minimization of such breaches among other peoples, is then a corruption, which a clear understanding of the moral lessons of the Holocaust should warn against.

Iran, and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah have made it very clear in written and spoken words and documents that they are in the process of planning to commit genocide against the Jewish people. And yet, it is Israel on trial at the Hague for genocide. Furthermore, the Americans and others who want to turn over Gaza to the similar thinking terrorists who are part of the Palestinian Authority.

American Secretary of State Blinken seems to care not what happens to Israel in his fantasy of a two-state solution – which would expose Israel to Hamas-like bombing, terrorism and October 7th like conduct on both sides of this small country. Blinken then must accept that Israel go back to the “Auschwitz borders”, which is sadly ironic when we are supposed to be remembering the Holocaust.

I suggest that every Holocaust Remembrance event by every anti-Israel NGO and European anti-Israel nation, should be confronted with allegations that by supporting the terror state in Gaza and restraining Israel from ending it, and by doing little for the hostages in Gaza, they are participating in the Hostage Holocaust.

I watched quite a few interviews done with survivors of the barbaric genocidal murder, torture and rapes of October 7th. No one who watches them will ever forget them. We can only guess at this point whether such survivors have suffered as much trauma or more than the survivors of the Shoah.

As I argue in my new book shortly to be released, Second Generation Radical: The World Through One Man’s Second Generation Lens, Second and Third generation descendants of the Shoah should be taking a leadership role in the fight against this “Second Holocaust”. In my novel about a professor who writes a book claiming that a Second Holocaust is underway after the terrorism of the Second Intifada, I made clear some 20 years ago, my concern that Iran and its proxies were undertaking a Second Shoah, as distressing as that was for my readers. See The Second Catastrophe: A Novel About a Book and its Author.

Like so many others, I have become somewhat obsessed with the fate of the hostages, men, women and children, who seem to be abused in the extreme, mentally, physically and sexually. There are Americans among them, yet the Americans are focused not on the hostages, but how to reward the Palestinian Arabs with a new terror state, stronger and larger than the current one(s).

Seeing some photos of violated young girls, and hearing what few facts have emerged about the state of the hostages after more than 100 days of the most evil torture, which is beyond our imaginations, who cannot grieve? And we know that this is a Holocaust, what I call a Hostage Holocaust.

And we must take advantage of every forum that pretends to be remembering the Holocaust to argue that they should commemorate not just the Holocaust in Europe but also this second Shoah, the Hostage Holocaust.

We should remind the world that viewing the Holocaust as a symbol of the need for respect for diversity, multiculturalism and tolerance of evil, is an affront to right-thinking people everywhere – and we are witnessing a failure of morality if we fail to support Israel in this Hostage Holocaust.

©2024. Howard Rotberg. All rights reserved.

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