{"id":111263,"date":"2024-03-04T18:05:53","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T16:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=111263"},"modified":"2024-03-04T11:29:07","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T09:29:07","slug":"08-05-102","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=111263","title":{"rendered":"Longing for Auschwitz"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Longing for Auschwitz<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n


\nALVIN H. ROSENFELD<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Large pools of blood stain a child\u2019s bunk bed and sheets, located inside a safe room, as seen through the window, after Hamas militants attacked this kibbutz days earlier near the border of Gaza on October 19, 2023 in Nir Oz, Israel \/<\/span> ALEXI J. ROSENFELD\/GETTY IMAGES<\/em>
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The ultimate aims of the war against the Jewish state would rival the worst horrors of our history<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

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Hamas\u2019s assault on Israelis on October 7th was not an act of war as we normally think of it but something far worse. We don\u2019t have an adequate term for what occurred on that day, so people use words like \u201cterrorism,\u201d \u201cbarbarism,\u201d \u201catrocity,\u201d \u201cdepravity,\u201d \u201cmassacre,\u201d and so on. All are correct, and yet all fall short of capturing the annihilationist fury set loose at the Nova music festival and in the kibbutzim and small towns of southern Israel. The people attacked in those places were not only to die, but to die in torment. In addition to the merciless torture, killings, slashings, burnings, beheadings, mutilations, dismemberments, and kidnappings, there were gang-rapes and other forms of sadistic sexual assault, including, according to some reports, the cutting off of women\u2019s breasts, nails driven into women\u2019s thighs and groins, bullets fired into their vaginas, and even intercourse with female corpses. Unimaginable? For most normal people, yes. But before going into Israel, the Hamas assassins were instructed to \u201cdirty them\u201d and \u201cwhore them.\u201d And that\u2019s precisely what many of them faithfully did.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If it were possible to encapsulate all the evil of that day in a single image, it would be that of the violent seizure of a young Israeli woman, Naama Levy, 19, barefoot, beaten, and bloodied, her hands tied behind her back, the crotch of her sweatpants heavily soiled, possibly from being raped, dragged by her hair at gunpoint into a Hamas car, and driven off to Gaza to suffer an unspeakable fate among her captors there.Her assailants filmed every second of her ordeal; and as one watches the clips of her being taken away, one sees crowds nearby loudly shouting \u201cAllah-hu Akbar\u201d \u2013 \u201cAllah is the greatest\u201d\u2014a victory cry that offers religious sanction to the malign treatment of Naama Levy and countless others seized, slaughtered, and abducted on that horrific day.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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All wars cause human suffering, but the cruelties visited upon Israelis on October 7th far surpasses what normally happens when armies go to war. Hamas\u2019s actions had a different aim: not conquest but the purposeful humiliation of Jews by people who detest them and were sworn to degrade and dehumanize them before murdering them. For those familiar with Jewish history, the mass violence enacted against Jews in Kishinev in 1903 came instantly to mind, as did the Farhoud in Iraq in 1941 and Chmielnicki\u2019s savage decimation of Ukrainian Jewish communities in the mid-17th<\/sup>\u00a0century. With memories of those earlier massacres newly revived, October 7th instantly evoked the word \u201cpogrom.\u201d With cause. But how could such a catastrophe occur in today\u2019s Israel? The country\u2019s military has been hailed as one of the strongest in the world and was regarded as invincible. And yet on October 7th, it failed to protect its southern border and prevent the ruthless assault on Jews in the Gaza envelope. Responding to Hamas\u2019s bloody deeds, one Israeli woman summed up the reactions of virtually every Jew in the country and millions of others abroad when she said, simply and incontrovertibly, \u201cEvery Israeli\u2019s worst nightmares have come true.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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All wars cause human suffering, but the cruelties visited upon Israelis on October 7th far surpasses what normally happens when armies go to war.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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October 7th, 2023 was the most destructive day of mass violence against Jews since the end of the Holocaust. The carnage carried out on that day, far from being a by-product of war, was a religiously sanctioned, orgiastic display of unrestrained Jew-hatred. One cannot begin to understand it if one ignores the Hamas Charter and other Islamist teachings that make Hamas the organization it is and inspires it to do what it does.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hamas originates as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is and always has been a jihadist organization, which sees the existence of the State of Israel as an intolerable intrusion into the Domain of Islam (\u201cdar al-islam\u201d) and is committed to removing Israel by whatever means necessary. The preamble to the Hamas Charter declares that \u201cIsrael exists and will continue to exist until Islam obliterates it, just as it obliterated others before it.\u201d The \u201cPalestinian problem,\u201d it affirms, \u201cis a religious problem\u201d and is not amenable to a negotiated political settlement.The only way to \u201craise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine\u201d is through \u201cjihad,\u201d a holy war that is a \u201cduty for every Muslim wherever he may be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As a result of their success in invading Israel on October 7th and killing and capturing so many Jews, Hamas has incited the passions of many in the broader Arab and Muslim worlds and, alarmingly, well beyond. In doing so, it has made emphatic the Islamist reading of the Arab-Israeli conflict as essentially a Muslim-Jewish conflict. Most people in the West view the problem as basically political and territorial in nature. That is true, but only in part. As represented by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Islamic Republic of Iran (the sponsor of all the others), it is also religious, and at its heart of hearts there resides an annihilationist fantasy of killing Jews and bringing an end to the Jewish state. Hamas and its allies are not looking for a two-state solution but a repeat of the Final Solution. Their brutally successful killing spree on October 7th was an extravagant rehearsal for that larger goal, a genocidal one.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Where does that leave Israel? Right now, at war with Hamas in Gaza and in a simmering battle with Hezbollah in the north that could rapidly explode into a full-scale and even more fearsome war.What is at stake, as most Israelis understand it, is nothing less than the survival of the state itself. Hamas spokesmen have said as much. On October 24th, Gazi Hamad, speaking as a representative of Hamas to a Lebanese television station, declared that the October 7th attack \u201cis just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth\u2026until Israel is annihilated.\u201d Iran, long sworn to finish off \u201cthe criminal Zionist entity,\u201d has inscribed some of its newest ballistic missiles with the words \u201cDeath to Israel\u201d in bold Hebrew letters. The Houthis in Yemen, well-armed with powerful Iranian-supplied missiles, chant \u201cDeath to America, Death to Israel, and a curse upon the Jews.\u201d Iran itself, as recent reports indicate, continues its progress toward building nuclear weapons. As far back as 2001, Hashemi Rafsanjani, then president of Iran, boasted that \u201cthe use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What is new here are not the threats against Israel but the determination to carry them out and the capability of doing so. Hamas\u2019s successful penetration of southern Israel and the extreme violence it displayed has no precedent in Israeli history. The country was traumatized on that day and remains traumatized, making October 7th a date frozen right now on the national calendar. Most of the world has moved on, but to Israelis every day will remain October 7th until all the hostages are returned home from Gaza, Hamas is militarily disarmed, and its aim of obliterating Israel is definitively nullified. Whether Israel can succeed in achieving these goals is an open question. What is clear is that Israelis today feel seriously let down by their national and military leaders, less secure, and far more vulnerable than they did before October 7th.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Every Israeli\u2019s worst nightmares have come true.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Although the existential circumstances of Jews living outside of Israel are much different, on the emotional and psychological levels they, too, have been shaken by recent developments. The anti-Israel passions set loose in street demonstrations and on college campuses and social media have heightened already resurgent displays of open Jew-hatred and rattled a previously assumed sense of security. Academic scholars will continue to debate whether anti-Zionism and antisemitism are similar or separate phenomena, but to most others, the links between hatred of Israel and Jew-hatred are apparent. The reasons are clear: the widespread and unapologetic branding of Israel as an apartheid, genocidal, even Nazi state\u2014defamatory accusations that were in wide circulation well before October 7th\u2014are rapidly becoming normalized. The same is true for both verbal and physical hostility to Jews. As these impassioned animosities coalesce and go mainstream, Jews everywhere are experiencing an unease about their place in society that is new and unnerving for many of them.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reactions vary: for reasons of self-protection, some feel it\u2019s best to be less visibly Jewish, set aside Jewish markers, and distance themselves from Israel. For reasons of pride and self-affirmation, others refuse to be cowed, step forward as strongly identified Jews, and publicly proclaim themselves in solidarity with Israel and other Jews. October 7th has sharpened both responses, and what lies ahead remains to be seen, but the date\u2019s significance for how Jews see themselves and others see Jews is evident.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Also evident is the following: There will be no Jewish future worthy the name without the State of Israel. At present, something like 47% of world Jewry lives in Israel. That\u2019s almost 1 out of every 2 Jews alive. Were Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and their allies ever to succeed in liquidating Israel, the loss would be immeasurable and irrecoverable. Most Jews still alive elsewhere would be physically imperiled, psychologically traumatized, and spiritually enervated to the point of collapse. That might have been the Jewish condition after the Holocaust, were it not for Israel\u2019s founding only three years after the liberation of the death camps\u2014an act of collective revival that demonstrated a level of national resilience and spiritual rebirth almost without parallel in history. But far from recognizing the Jewish people\u2019s reestablishment of national independence and political sovereignty in its ancient homeland in positive terms, some of Israel\u2019s neighbors have seen the existence of the Jewish state as an intolerable affront that needs to be reversed.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hamas set out to reverse it as forcefully as possible on October 7th. Its murderous deeds on that day were meant to debase and kill Jews and rally others to collectively put an end to the Jewish state, a strategic objective that recalls some memorable words of the Hungarian Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor, Imre Kert\u00e9sz: \u201cThe antisemite of our age no longer loathes Jews; he wants Auschwitz.\u201d Today\u2019s most passionate antisemites continue to loathe Jews and, for that very reason, want Auschwitz. If Israelis were not fully aware of those hateful passions before October 7th, they surely know them now. They also know that one Holocaust is one too many and are committed to doing whatever they must to make sure there will not be a repeat. They need and deserve all the support we can give them.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alvin H. Rosenfeld<\/strong> is the director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the editor, most recently, of\u00a0Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Longing for Auschwitz ALVIN H. ROSENFELD Large pools of blood stain a child\u2019s bunk bed and sheets, located inside a safe room, as seen through the window, after Hamas militants attacked this kibbutz days earlier near the border of Gaza on October 19, 2023 in Nir Oz, Israel \/ ALEXI J. ROSENFELD\/GETTY IMAGES . The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111263"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111276,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111263\/revisions\/111276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}