Gary Willig is a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is only fitting that today we celebrate the witnessing of “Never Again" in action.
Ran Gvili is back. After more than 27 months, over two years, all of the hostages are home. For the first time in well over a decade, there are no Israelis or Jews being held hostage in Gaza.
It is impossible to overstate what this means for Israelis and for Jews everywhere. A years-long living nightmare is finally over. With the last person abducted during Hamas’s genocidal rampage returned, October 7 will still be mourned forever, but now, the healing can also truly begin.
The struggle to bring them all home was long and difficult. Every partial release, every successful rescue, came with the knowledge that it would make the situation even more dire for those who were not released or rescued. The IDF’s efforts to defeat Hamas were constantly held back out of concern for the hostages’ well-being.
The sight of IDF soldiers singing ‘Ani Ma’amin,’ - 'I believe' - the beautiful expression of faith in the coming of the messiah, as Ran was brought back, encapsulates everything “Never Again" means in the 21st century.
During the Holocaust, Jews were reduced to mere numbers, the numbers tattooed on their arms. They were treated as nameless by their Nazi executioners, the ultimate dehumanization before the slaughter. An uncaring world let the Nazis get away with this dehumanization and refused to lift a finger to save the millions of innocents who were murdered. The 6 million became a statistic, as Stalin predicted. It was only after the genocide was exposed that the victims, such as Anne Frank, began to be seen as people and as individuals.
The existence of a Jewish State was to have ensured that such a situation would not happen again. Despite the high number of people who were taken captive, over 250, to Israelis, they were never mere numbers. They were and are people, individuals. Their names became household names. Synagogues recited all of their names in prayers for their return. Millions know the name of Ran Gvili and the story of his heroism on October 7, just as they know the names and stories of so many of the hostages who came back before Ran.
Instead of an uncaring world that left the victims of the Nazis to their fate, there is now a nation that cares deeply and would not rest until every last captive was home, whether they were living or dead. A nation that was willing to move heaven and earth to rescue those the world wanted to abandon. When much of Europe decided it was too politically inconvenient to care about the hostages and tried to create a Palestinian Arab state that would continue to hold dozens of hostages, Israel stayed the course.
US President Donald Trump is a rare exception to this global trend of refusing to care about the lives of Jews. He was deeply moved by the dedication of the families of the hostages and their supporters to returning all of their loved ones, even those who were murdered by Hamas and by other terrorists. The dedication of the Jewish people to all of the hostages, the refusal to treat them as statistics instead of people, helped inspire him to work to free all hostages instead of some or half as his predecessor had done. The result was that all of the living hostages were returned, and Israel maintained control of the area where the last hostage was buried.
But it was Israel which brought back the last hostage. Shin Bet investigations narrowed down the location, and an IDF operation found and brought Ran home to his family. 81 years after the world refused to lift a finger to save Jews, the army of the Jewish State brought home one of its own.
This is the essence of “Never Again" and the essence of Zionism. The State of Israel ensures that never again will Jews be reduced to mere numbers and statistics. Zionism means that Jews will be treated as people, as individuals who matter, even when the wider world refuses to see them as anything more than numbers.