Op-Ed: A Second Holocaust Is Possible in Our Time

WASHINGTON (JNS/Shuki Friedman) – The question of whether a second Holocaust is plausible in the foreseeable future may sound like an intellectual provocation. But a cold-eyed look at today’s geopolitical and social reality shows that it is a real danger. Unless we are proactive in preventing this risk from materializing, we may find ourselves facing such a reality far sooner than anyone would have imagined just a few years ago.

Contemporary antisemitism is no longer a marginal phenomenon perpetrated by a small lunatic fringe of inciters. It mainly festers in two dangerous forms: as open, brutal hatred of Jews as individuals in Diaspora communities; and as a radical echo chamber calling for the destruction of the State of Israel—for its elimination as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Only determined action by Israel and Jews around the world can remedy this.

The risk of a second Holocaust is growing for several reasons.

The concentration of Jews in Israel is unprecedented in history. Never before have so many Jews lived in such a small geographic space, a fact that makes Israel a vulnerable strategic target for those who aspire to a modern final solution. Iran, a string of Islamist terror organizations and other states make no secret of their intention to destroy Israel. For some of them, the threat to annihilate the “Zionist entity” is not confined to rhetorical bluster. Operational plans are on the table.

In a world where technology is ever more accessible, unless they are stopped, it is only a matter of time before totalitarian regimes acquire the instruments of mass destruction. The moment the leadership in Tehran and its proxies possess the operational capability to destroy Israel, the likelihood that they will attempt to do so rises dramatically.

Alongside the military threat in the Middle East, we are witnessing dangerous ideological and political trends in the West. In the United States and Europe, growing groups on the far left and far right are no longer content to criticize Israeli policy. They call for the complete abolition of Israel as a Jewish state.

The practical meaning of that demand is to expose millions of Jews to immediate mortal danger, stripped of sovereign protection. In the digital world, social media serves as an accelerant for the wildfire of antisemitic ideas, which now enjoy a degree of social legitimacy not seen since the 1930s.

Most alarming of all is the feebleness of Western countries, which may invoke the Holocaust in official ceremonies, but often shy away from taking serious and determined action against antisemitic threats and other hate crimes on their own soil. The danger is that this antisemitism will become institutionalized. With the rise of extremist forces, right-wing and left-wing alike, to positions of power in Europe, we may see unleashed state-sponsored antisemitism once again.

This possibility cannot be written off as paranoia or hyperbole.

The common assumption that the world will never allow another Holocaust to happen is dangerously naive. First, as is well known, the Allied powers made no real effort to disrupt Germany’s well-oiled machinery of Jewish extermination. Beyond that, more recent decades show that the international community responds with tepid indifference to genocide in places like Rwanda, Darfur and Syria, or to the persecution of the Uyghur minority in China.

The world does not intervene effectively to prevent mass destruction when the narrow interests of the great powers aren’t at stake. To rely on the hope that this time, unlike in the past, the world would mobilize to save the Jews is to misread reality. Even the memory of the Holocaust itself is eroding—becoming an abstraction, severed from the concrete task of protecting Jews in the present.

Millions actively work to deny or efface the Holocaust, while others turn it into a bludgeon against Israel, reversing the roles of victim and aggressor.

What will prevent a second Holocaust is neither historical memory nor international goodwill. It is one thing only: Jewish-Israeli power. The Jews of the 21st century possess a strength they never had before. The military, economic and technological power of the State of Israel, alongside the political influence of world Jewry, is the only guarantee of our survival.

Education, Holocaust remembrance and advocacy against antisemitism all matter. But only the preservation of that power—together with the understanding that we can rely on no one but ourselves and our shared strength—can ensure that history does not repeat itself. We must understand, down deep, that our security does not rest on the mercy of the nations, but on our ability to defend ourselves with our own hands.

Shuki Friedman, Ph.D., is director-general of JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute, and a senior lecturer in law at the Peres Academic Center.