On his website, Glen Beck asks, "What is 'never again is now'?" He answers, "It is my calling card to act against the genocides in the Middle East and mobilize our nation towards the efforts to provide aid for the refugees, support for the suppressed, and to show the world that Americans will not stand idle to the terror."
Beck’s liberal use of Never Again, equating the term with all genocides perpetuated by tyrannical regimes against refugees and other minority populations, while admittedly horrible and inhumane, was not the intent of the term Never Again.
I am not debating or questioning the fact that all genocides are horrific and that as many as 50 million human beings, including 2/3 of Europe’s Jews, were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. There is no question that the Nazis targeted the German society populations of Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally disabled, J. Witnesses, communists, socialists, trade unionists and religious opponents, but it was only the Jews who were singled out for a world-wide Final Solution.
The Holocaust is the term specifically used to describe the horrible, torturous inhuman events designed by Hitler and his followers to eradicate Jews from the world, not just Germany, not just Europe, but as the Iranians claimed on their missiles 70 years later, “to wipe Jews off the face of the Earth" - a world that was Judenrein. The term genocide was codified in the late 1940’s by the United Nations as a crime to describe the systematic destruction of a particular group or tribe of people from an area. Linking the Holocaust with other types of genocides is not only historically incorrect but it neutralizes the fact that Jewish people have been victims of anti-Semitic genocides in almost every nation and in every generation, culminating in “a Final Solution” which was the final attempt to rid the world of Jews through a holocaust.
Historical Revisionists, ignoring this distinction, say, “Hey, Jews, enough already; get over it. Other populations endured equally tragic treatment, too. Your connection to Israel is nothing more than a UN decision to make room for you in British Palestine following the Europe tragedies. You are just occupiers on Palestinian land because the world felt sorry for you."
Their ulterior motive has to do with an underlying agenda to delegitimize any Jewish claim to Israel, whether it be historical, biblical or legal.
By marginalizing the fact that the Jews were specifically targeted to be eradicated entirely or recognizing that Jews were entitled to survive as a people and protect themselves from anti-Semitic forces that had persecuted them since the time of the Pharaoh, and that by returning to their historical and ancestral homeland, Jews could be eternally protected and again identified as a nation, History Revisionists can whitewash the Holocaust and deny the Jewish connection to Israel.
In January 2012 I published an op-ed entitled “Israel is a Never Again State” where I first presented the misinformative narrative described above. Two years later, a professor from Tel Aviv University, Yechiel Klar, expounded on this theory in an article entitled, The “Never Again” State of Israel: The Emergence of the Holocaust as a Core Feature of Israeli Identity.
I wrote “In 1948, with the establishment of modern Israel, Jews believed that they had created a refuge to welcome the Jews of the Diaspora back to their eternal homeland; a refuge that would welcome hundreds of thousands of their brethren from all over the Diaspora to live as Jews in security, freedom and peace."
Subsequently, the Islamic world would create their own political narrative to delegitimize those claims, saying that the Jews received the land only because of the Holocaust. Thus, they claimed, the Jews were illegally occupying the land and it was not theirs to keep.
To refute their misguided claims, many influential Jewish and Christian leaders have been vehemently stressing that the Jewish nation acquired the Land of Israel because of the Covenant between Abraham and G-d, as well as by legal means. The Jewish connection to Israel was not only because of the Holocaust, but his presents a problem, because Israel is under an existential threat, and the creation of the Jewish state to prevent another Holocaust must never be understated or denied.
When I was at the 2011 Israel Day Parade in New York handing out the Never Again is Now Buttons to parade attendees, I was reprimanded time and time again by Pro-Zionists and Orthodox Jewish leaders that Israel and the Holocaust are two unrelated entities, one having nothing to do with the other. In fact, I was told, equating the establishment of the modern Jewish state with the Holocaust, is a distraction that the enemies of Israel will use to discredit any Jewish claim to the land.
A land for peace initiative will give the Jew-hating neighbors more land and a closer target but will not erase the ingrained hatred for Jews or enhance the existence of Israel.
Both, however, are necessary. Nations who don’t see the Holocaust and the Biblical connection of the Jewish people to Israel, are pretty much just deep-seated in their anti-Semitism. Jews who don’t acknowledge both the Biblical connection and the role that the Holocaust played in our return to the Land of Israel, are simply blind, still have their heads in the sand hoping that Jews will be accepted into mainstream society and are ignorant of their own history.
In 1948 the United Nations had sense enough to realize that Jews were then, as they have been for thousands of years, and will forever remain, a hated and hunted population that needs protection. No mandate, no policy and law was going to change that fact. That was why a Jewish homeland needed to exist and why Jews were returned to their ancestral homeland to survive, thrive and live among themselves. While historians, anthropologists, scholars and theologians have established an undeniable Jewish connection to the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisroel), it is equally true that the Jewish State of Israel was a direct result of the world-wide hunting of Jews brought to light by the Holocaust.
If we are to present a clear history of the Jewish people, we must not allow the Arabs or anyone to control the narrative. If we do, then we will be forced into denying the truth about the part the Holocaust played in creating the modern Jewish State. Why? Because we would fear that the world will accuse us of using the Holocaust to justify Israel’s existence. If we fall into this trap, we confirm their lies, and do irreparable damage to the Jewish narrative.
While Jews undeniably have had over four millennia of Biblical and historical connections to the land, there can be no question that re-establishing a safe Jewish homeland in May of 1948 was the primary focal point for the protection and proliferation of a guaranteed Jewish existence in the world. On that day, The United Nations recognized the sovereignty of the Jewish state and reconfirmed what had always existed since the time that the Israelite's who had wandered throughout Egypt, guided by Moses knew; Israel was promised to the Jews by G-d’s Covenant with Abraham.
After 4000 years of suffering, wandering, exiles, persecutions and atrocities culminating in a Holocaust, only seventy years ago, one thing is perfectly clear: Jews must have their own sovereign state where they can dwell, thrive, and protect themselves.
In fact, with another Hitler on the horizon in the form of an Iranian tyrant with nuclear power who openly vows to “wipe Jews off the face of the earth” and indoctrinates children and followers to kill Jews so as to obtain eternal honor, our deliberately and consciously choosing to ignore the similarities to the Holocaust’s mission to hunt down Jews world-wide is not only foolish and irresponsible, it is downright dangerous.
The establishment of the State of Israel, from the ashes of the Holocaust, provides Jews the right to defend themselves from any continuing threat to their existence, today and eternally. In essence, Israel is a Never-Again State that declares:
Never Again will Jews allow themselves to become victims,
Never Again will Jews be helplessly hunted or persecuted,
Never Again will Jews be threatened by people who would abandon their own humanity for the purpose of absolute power and world domination.
Even Vice President Pence confirmed: “Tragic events of World War II and the Holocaust and through strong American leadership at the United Nations, Israel was restored to her homeland”.
Let’s set the record straight and call out anti-Semitic policies for what they are. Movements like BDS, United Nations, Arab League and the like are fully supported by the European Union, China, Russia and over 140 Jew-hating nations that want nothing more than to see the world rid of Jews. These movements and organizations may have alternate names, but they are just modern-day equivalents to the Holocaust, calling for a world-wide elimination of Jews and the Jewish state.
Most important, is recognizing that it is the hatred of Jews that drives the Islamic mentality. They are not interested in Israel’s legal rights or in peace between Jews and Arabs. They simply want the Jews dead and gone. A land for peace initiative will give the Jew-hating neighbors more land, a closer target but will not erase the ingrained hatred for Jews or enhance the existence of Israel. Even if we left our G-d promised Land of Israel, they would continue to hunt us down and kill us.
Abbas and Arafat’s mentor, The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, visited Hitler to join in planning the Final Solution of the Jews in the Middle East long before the new State of Israel was established. Get the connection?
