From the Holocaust to October 7 !

Tomorrow, Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) brings Israel to a standstill at 10:00 am for 2 minutes of silent contemplation for the six million who perished at the hands of civilised Europeans for the crime of being born Jewish. Like October 7 2023, the butchers of Hitler’s willing helpers were motivated by unrestrained hate for Jews. Unlike the Nazi era Jews do not stand alone at the mercy of their tormentors anymore. They are part of the Jewish revolution that was restarted in 1948, as the Jewish State rose from the ashes of history.

Despite the fact that Jewish history has been drowning in suffering and tribulations, persecution and expulsions, pogroms and inquisitions. We had never known any act of hate as threatening and terrifying as the Germans’ “final solution.” These cold-blooded murderers, like their Hamas fellow-travellers, eighty years after the Holocaust, found horrific ways of exterminating men, women and children. The world has never seen such monsters.

And so we must not forget the Holocaust or October 7, over and above the fact that a growing number of people around the world choose to deny the facts of both criminal acts.

If October 7 2023, and the Holocaust 1933-1945 have taught us anything, it is that the attempt to be a nation, without our own country, ends in Auschwitz. It also taught us not to rely on the mercy of the nations, and therefore not to trust them for our security.

The message from the Holocaust is that the Exile has ended, the time to serve the Diaspora a writ of divorce. The murdered Jews of the Holocaust and more recently, October 7, demand we rise to the challenge of building a Holy Jewish Homeland for all Jews while there is still time to do so!