Never Again? The Denial of Realities and the Inability to Face the Truths

I only met him once. I doubt I will meet him again.

‘The trouble is that Israel is full of American Jews and they are all doctors, dentists and lawyers. All of them have dual citizenship so they should get on a plane a go back to the US. That would resolve it.’

‘It’ was of course the Israel-Hamas conflict. I was able to contain my shock at this statement not just because I have heard many incredulous comments and fantastical ‘solutions’ to the decades-long battle for the land over many years, but because this one genuinely took me by surprise. The only response I could think of was, ‘And what about all those Israeli citizens that are not American doctors, dentists, and lawyers that don’t have dual citizenship?’

Quick as a flash, indicating that this may well have been thought through previously, ‘well they would have to get on with it, they would soon make peace with the Arabs.’

My goodness, this conversation was loaded with a lot of stuff. I don’t think I need to unpack it. However, it clearly indicates that someone with intelligence can have an altogether unrealistic opinion he thought to be a wholly reasonable argument. He is not alone. There are far too many that believe the Israel-Palestine conflict can be resolved by simply acting in a certain way or doing something that is so blindingly obvious despite the fact it has eluded the greatest political minds and the world’s finest diplomats for more than a century. 

Added to such naïve views is the growing denial of reality and the inability to face the truth by many professional commentators let alone the growing number of regular and even occasional social media activists. So many, including the professionals amongst them, are often ignorant of the complexities and the historicities of the conflict. Some of this could be forgiven if there were a humility to their approach. However, when someone thinks they are an expert on this and they are clearly not, then they need to think again. The Israel-Palestine conflict has not been resolved not for want of trying.

What can be even more galling is when someone is so embedded in a particular viewpoint that they cannot allow themselves to engage in a conversation with anyone who might present even a variant of their perspective let alone an alternative. What the current Israel-Hamas has highlighted is that over the last two decades or so is that allegiance to one side or the other has become so embedded that the conflict has been exported across the globe. We are now seeing that conflict on the streets of our cities where abhorrent placards and chants call for genocide ‘From the River to the Sea’ and ‘intifada from London to Gaza.’ We are now seeing that conflict on the bus shelters and lampposts where posters have been torn down of the children and elderly held hostage by an utterly brutal and depraved terrorist organisation. We are now seeing that conflict in the exponential rise of antisemitism in places of education and in almost every section of society.

The level of doubt being cast on the 7 October massacres, the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, is extraordinary. It may be a symptom of our age to fall for conspiracy theories but disbelieving the barbarism inflicted on the victims when the evidence is so unequivocal, and to do so in such a hasty manner, has to be a new low.

When Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower arrived at the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration campaign in the final days of the Second World War, he was faced with scenes that even he, after years of fighting a brutal enemy, found to be an exceptional level of brutality. He was a man of great foresight. Knowing that the depravity before him was unprecedented he recognised that those that had not witnessed would doubt the facts. He therefore ordered the scenes to be filmed and photographed, and locals to be brought to the camp to witness for themselves the scene, so that no one should question the veracity of the horror inflicted upon the incarcerated victims, the vast majority of them Jews. The newsreel footage was eventually shown in cinemas across the world, not only of Ohdruf but Belsen, Buchenwald, and elsewhere.

Once the initial shock began to dissipate and people were able to begin reflecting on what had taken place the term Never Again echoed across the nations. This would often mean different things to liberators and survivors. Never Again might mean that we should never permit the conditions in which such contempt could erupt into genocide. Equally Never Again also came to mean that ‘we will not let this happen again to us.’

Later, when Holocaust denial became a feature, for the far right especially, and was robustly challenged to the extent that in some European countries Holocaust denial is illegal, we might consider that we should Never Again doubt the depths some would sink in their hatred of Jews.

Eisenhower was prescient. Today many on the far left cast doubt on the 7^th October massacre, the Simchat Torah pogrom. Did it really take place? If it did, could Israel have conducted the killings using Apache helicopters? If it wasn’t Israel, were they still complicit in inciting the wrath of Hamas? Did Hamas avoid the killing of civilians? Were women raped? Were children set ablaze, were babies beheaded? All these questions and so many more avoid the facts, seek to erase the reality, exonerate Hamas, despite their own body cam footage of the slaughter and the live streaming of torture, and lay the blame at the feet of Jews, again.

The failure to at least condemn atrocity may act as the first stepping stone to a more sinister step of denial which can in turn lead to acting as an apologist for antisemitism and terrorism. If we have ever wondered how so many people in what had been one of the most cultured nations on earth had been blind to the steps that led to the Holocaust then we only need to look about us today. It is deeply worrying that speeches, articles and interviews that understandably lament the tragic loss of innocent lives in Gaza but fail to acknowledge the premeditated brutality of Hamas on 7^th October. On that tragic day hundreds, young and old alike, were raped, tortured, executed, and paraded as trophies of war for civilians to spit on their naked bodies. When those appointed to speak on behalf of the terrorist organisation that conducted such depraved acts on 7^th October on the one hand state they didn’t happen yet they live streamed them on social media, and on the other hand pledge to do it again and again until Israel is eradicated we should know where the truth lies. Failure to recognise this and to unequivocally condemn such barbarism is a first step towards becoming an apologist for antisemitism. Calls for a global intifada, the erasure of Israel, and the genocide of Jews should not be dismissed as empty threats. We must not doubt the impact rising antisemitism is having on members of the Jewish communities and those concerned for their presence and wellbeing in our world. 

Never again should we discount the evil intent of some in our society. Never again should we doubt verifiable facts in favour of the propaganda put out by the haters. Never again should we be so naïve as to think this could not happen here and now.