Letter: ‘Never again’ means ‘never again’

Next month, May 5 will be commemorated by only a few people.

Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, was inaugurated in Israel in 1953, to commemorate the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Just one generation after nearly seven out of 10 Jews in Europe were exterminated, it seems we are experiencing a replay of 1938, that terrible year of appeasement of evil. It seems the world is again divided between those nations who are about to murder Jews, and those who would abet them, or just avert their eyes, and let it happen.

Through the Genocide Convention of 1948, the U.S. and the world promised that genocide should “never again” be perpetrated while outsiders stand idly by.

Tell that to the people of Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur, Rwanda, and the Yazidis.

Today, while Palestinians are attacking Israeli men women and children with knives, incited by a leadership demanding that Jews be forbidden entrance to the Temple Mount so as not to “desecrate the Holy Sites with their filthy feet,” our government is pushing the Israelis hard to accede to America’s view of what is best for Israel. The Israelis, for their part, are not anxious to, in their view, commit suicide.

For the Jewish people, the commemoration of Yom Hashoah has come to underline that “never again” will they leave their fate in the hands of others; “never again” will they march helplessly to their deaths. The world would be wise to “commemorate” that.

This story was originally published April 21, 2016 at 4:48 PM with the headline "Letter: ‘Never again’ means ‘never again’."