Gaza and the Auschwitz liberation anniversary

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman interview Israeli journalist on his very critical view of the current brutal war and its effects on Israeli society¹:

Levy in a column this week alludes to the ugly irony the Netanyahu government’s genocidal conduct in Gaza has created for a key part of the Israeli national narrative:

Benjamin Netanyahu will not travel to Poland next month for the main ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, over concern that he could be arrested on the basis of the warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

This bitter and not-so-subtle irony of history supplies a surreal confluence that was nearly unimaginable before now: merely to imagine the prime minister landing in Krakow, arriving at the main entrance of Auschwitz and being arrested by Polish police at the gate, under the slogan "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free"); merely to consider that of all the figures and countries, it is the prime minister of Israel who is prevented from attending the memorial for members of his people on account of the threat of international law hovering over his head. The German chancellor, yes; Netanyahu, no.

… The distance between Auschwitz and Gaza, with a stopover in The Hague, is still enormous, but it can no longer be argued that the comparison is preposterous.

October 7, 2023 is increasingly emerging as a fateful turning point for Israel, much more than it seems at present, similar only to its previous calamity, the 1967 war, which was also not diagnosed in time. In the Six-Day War, Israel lost its humility, and on October 7 it lost its humanity. In both cases, there is irreversible damage.

Meanwhile, we must consider the historical occasion and absorb its significance: a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, world leaders march in silence, the last living survivors march alongside them, and the place of the prime minister of the state that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust is vacant.² [my emphasis]

Every nation has its national myths. It’s part of the process of forming a nation. The myths don’t have to be concocted out of thin air, though they are not the same as factual history. They just have to be suitable for forming a collective identification. But they can also become the basis of national self-criticism as well as criticism from others.

The Israeli-American historian and genocide expert Omer Bartov wrote this past March about how the image of the Holocaust functions as state- and war propaganda for the Israeli government. He talks about it in the context of the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust as a historical event.

The importance of the “uniqueness” notion of the Holocaust was a part of the so-called Historikerstreit (historians’ fight) among German historians and polemicists of the late 1980s. The historian Ernst Nolte made an argument that was at the least an attempt to minimize (or “relativize”) the significance of the Holocaust, arguing absurdly that it was actually the Soviet Union that gave Hitler the idea with its own labor and prison camps. Stressing the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust was an argument meant to reject such attempts to relativize the Nazis’ genocide.

Bartov in his essay describes how that concept of “uniqueness” has contributed to the misuse of the Holocaust as a political image and slogan.

For historians, the claim of historical uniqueness is both a truism and a contradiction in terms. It is a truism because no historical event is precisely the same as any other. It is a contradiction in terms because no historical event occurs outside of a context and can therefore not be understood other than by tracing its roots, comparing it to related events, and evaluating its relationship to other simultaneous developments. Thus, for instance, barring Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the “final solution” would have been very different, and might not have even happened at all. To put it differently, historical uniqueness implies extracting an event from history and propelling it into metaphysics, which is not an area in which historians feel at home.

All this means that by and large, most historians today would argue that while the Holocaust, like all other events in history, had unique features, such as the extermination camps, it was at the same time part of a particular historical trajectory, outside of which it cannot be understood. What, then, is at stake in asserting the uniqueness of the Holocaust? As we can see when observing contemporary politics, the Holocaust has remained, at least rhetorically, unique to both Israel—and by extension, many Jews around the world—and to Germany.³ [my emphasis]

And the particular use of the Holocaust in Israeli politics has in practice promoted the kind of cruelty and disproportionate violence that Gideon Levy discusses in that interview. As Bartov also observes:

What had been for long the “never again” syndrome, thus became its exact opposite, the “again and again” syndrome—an internalized, irrational, and misleading terror of another Holocaust, always lurking behind the corner, from which one can liberate oneself only by lashing out, pressing down, breaking in, and blowing up, both one’s own doubts and unease, and any real or perceived external threat. [my emphasis]

1. Gideon Levy on Israel's "Moral Blindness": Gaza Babies Freeze; Strikes Kill Medical Staff, Reporters. Democracy Now! YouTube channel 12/27/2024. (Accessed: 2024-27-12).

2. Levy, Gideon (2024): From Auschwitz to Gaza, With a Stopover in The Hague. Haaretz 12/23/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-12-23/ty-article-opinion/.premium/from-auschwitz-to-gaza-with-a-stopover-in-the-hague/00000193-ea88-d17a-a193-fbe9f59b0000?gift=1b487d872e4c4f879c37c7f66a02a833> (Accessed: 2024-27-12).

3. Bartov, Omer (2023): Weaponizing Language: Misuses of Holocaust Memory and the Never Again Syndrome. Council for Global Cooperation 03/12/2024. <https://cgcinternational.co.in/weaponizing-language-misuses-of-holocaust-memory-and-the-never-again-syndrome/> (Accessed: 2024-27-12).