
by Rachel Stewart
‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’
At this time and juncture, that legendary line has never felt more germane. We are in an era of turbocharged history modification; it is either outright ignored or, if it doesn’t suit the politics of some, rewritten. And in many cases, simply unexplored.
The echoes of WW2 are still all around us if we care to listen. How can a conflict so global and traumatic not be resonating in the ether still?
I was born 17 years after the end of the war. All around me growing up in a third-generation farmhouse were pictures on the wall of an uncle that didn’t come home, and stories of a grandfather so psychologically damaged from mustard gas exposure in WW1 that he came home only to torment everyone around him.
So those echoes were fair booming throughout my childhood, and the downstream effects of all of it are clearer to me now than ever before.
But those reverberations are becoming faint and are totally drowned out by whatever demon has possessed those that scream “Globalise the Intifada.”
To see now, some three generations later, the return of naked antisemitism in all its ghoulish forms, is confirmation.
It was only 80 years ago that the allies advanced across Europe to discover the sheer scale of the industrialised murder camps, and the atrocities that had occurred within them. The liberation of the relatively few survivors took a huge mental toll on the soldiers involved. The human atrocity was too much to take in.
The subsequent Nuremburg Trials revealed even more evil, and the entire world learned of the extreme racial hatred the Jews were subject to.
The post-war liberal consensus began, and many found a new home in America that provided safe harbour. Jewish communities have been able to grow and thrive and currently they number around 7.5 million – or 2.5 per cent of the population. The majority reside in New York state.
At the end of 1973, and not quite a teenager, I arrived in the United States to a nation eye-wateringly different from rural New Zealand.
Over the next four years my life opened up in ways I can barely describe. One of those ways was being immersed in a country built on legal immigration from all four corners of the earth. A veritable melting pot of people and cultures built on the country's written and often spoken Constitution, and its commitment to democracy, individual rights, liberty, and justice for all.
Jewish communities played a large part in that blend, and their contribution to all things American was – and still is – massive.
I’ve travelled back and forth across the Pacific many times in the decades since and can say that that unwavering acceptance and cohesion of Jews within American society has never wavered. That is until now.
Since October 7, 2023, things have markedly escalated. The active Jew hatred has culminated in three distinct terror attacks over the last two months of this year alone – not that you would necessarily know that from the generally reprehensible reporting on each and every one of them.
The first attack in April targeted Pennsylvania’s Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro. His home was broken into and firebombed while he and his family were asleep upstairs.
The second occurred in downtown Washington DC when Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram were shot and killed as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21. Both were staffers at the Israeli Embassy.
The shooter upon his arrest said, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”
The latest attack a few days ago saw an illegal from Egypt use a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to attack a group of mainly elderly Jews participating in a solidarity walk for the hostages taken by Hamas.
The attacker repeatedly yelled “Free Palestine” and “Kill the Zionists.”
These words thrown around by terrorists in America, before, during or after they either attempt to kill or do kill, should chill you to the bone. They certainly chill me to the bone.
As to the root causes of taking that significant step from hatred to violence, they’re myriad.
College campuses have become a hot bed of not only vile rhetoric – by both students and staff alike – but also intimidatory behaviour. Jewish students have literally been hunted down by baying, flag-waving mobs, resulting in many too afraid to attend.
A complicit, lazy media who have chosen a ‘side’ and accordingly have steadily eroded anything resembling fairness and balance when reporting on anything to do with Israel. This is evident to anyone with eyes and ears.
On social media particularly you see the endless use of the word ‘Nazi’ weaponised against Jews. Equating Jews with Nazis is about as perverse a tactic as it gets. But an effective one. Killing Jews therefore becomes stopping Nazis.
And, of course, all of these things apply to us squarely here in New Zealand. We have keffiyeh-wearing politicians in our Parliament who are positively perky about chanting “From the River to the Sea” at the drop of a hat.
But there’s something deeply disturbing and personal to me about the many Americans turning their backs on their fellow citizens because they’re Jewish. Some are active about it, but most are just putting their heads down and saying nothing. Where have we seen that before?
There’s also no doubt we are living in precarious times and there are people all around us who have become untethered from reality. The world-wide maniacal response to Covid has sent many into a kind of unmooring. They have become mentally adrift in a sea of uncertainty.
Since time immemorial Jews have been the supreme scapegoat. They have always been vulnerable to intense bursts of senseless hatred. Now they find themselves surrounded on all sides by the ahistorical doctrine of the left and the indecent Hitler-loving conspiracies of the right.
But possibly worse is the people who stand by and let this all happen. The people who keep on scrolling when they see yet another story. The people who don’t want to upset the people pushing the latest cause de jour. The people who just want an easy life.
For all Jews – but particularly American Jews who have anchored in that safe harbour – the skies are gloomy. Having survived a real genocide those WW2 drums are fair pounding in their head, and the world is exceedingly dark right now.
It’s our job to help turn the lights back on.