Introduction.

The question of whether the historical memory of the Holocaust weighs on Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip has no simple answer and provokes fierce debate both within Israeli society and beyond. On one hand, the trauma of the destruction of European Jewry is deeply embedded in the national identity of the Jewish state and its citizens. The principle of "never again" has become a cornerstone of Israeli security policy, justifying the need for a strong army capable of protecting the Jewish people from any threat. On the other hand, the unprecedented scale of destruction in Gaza, the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, and the humanitarian catastrophe lead many to ask: does the memory of suffering become a justification for the suffering of others? Analysis of this problem requires examination of both the Israeli narrative strategy and the critical voices warning against the danger of instrumentalizing history.

I. Historical Context: From the Oslo Accords to October 7th.

The roots of the current conflict lie in decades of unresolved Arab-Israeli confrontation. Following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, there was hope for a peaceful settlement. Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, and the Palestinians recognized Israel's right to exist and renounced terrorist methods of struggle.

However, the peace process was thwarted by radicals on both sides. The Palestinian group Hamas, which emerged during the First Intifada, continued to insist on the destruction of the Jewish state and carried out attacks against Israelis. In Israel, right-wing forces, including the Likud party led by a young Benjamin Netanyahu, opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The culmination of Israeli attempts to break the vicious cycle was the "unilateral disengagement" of 2005, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the evacuation of all Jewish settlements and the withdrawal of troops from the Gaza Strip. This move, initially perceived by the international community as a gesture of goodwill, led to Hamas's seizure of power in Gaza in 2007, during which hundreds of supporters of the Palestinian National Authority were killed. Since then, Gaza has become a fortified enclave from which rocket fire and attacks on Israel were periodically carried out.

The bloody culmination came on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants invaded Israeli territory, killing more than 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage. This attack, whose brutality shocked Israeli society, was perceived as an existential threat that evoked the deepest historical analogies.

II. Perception of Threat Through the Prism of the Holocaust.

For a significant part of Israeli society, especially the generation raised on the lessons of the Holocaust, the events of October 7 activated the deepest historical fears. As noted in analytical materials, Jews know that threats must be taken seriously because history has repeatedly shown that they can become reality, as was the case during the Holocaust and many times before.

This psychological orientation forms a rigid paradigm of perception: any group proclaiming the destruction of Israel as its goal is perceived not as a political opponent but as an existential threat akin to Nazism. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have repeatedly called Hamas the "new Nazis," calling on the international community to unite around Israel as it once united against Hitler.

Thus, the historical memory of the Holocaust functions as a powerful mobilizing factor, justifying the need for decisive and even ruthless military action. In this logic, any hesitation or display of weakness is seen as a repetition of the fatal mistakes of the 1930s, when the international community failed to stop the Nazis in time. Underestimating Hamas and failing to take seriously its warnings of an apocalypse awaiting the Jewish people is understood as the responsibility of Israel's political and military leaders.

III. Criticism from Within: Israeli Voices Against Analogies.

However, voices within Israel itself warn against the misuse of historical parallels. Critics, representing both academic circles and the left opposition, point to the danger of trivializing the Holocaust by comparing it to the current conflict.

Poet Agi Mishol, for example, wrote that a "humanitarian city" sounds like a ghetto, and "total victory" increasingly resembles the "Final Solution." An editorial in the liberal newspaper Haaretz argued that the plan to create a "humanitarian city" in Rafah is effectively a plan to create a "concentration camp." Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert joined this criticism in an interview with British media, and radical activist Dr. Yolanda Yavor compared Netanyahu to the Nazi criminal Josef Mengele.

These statements provoked sharp rebuke from other Israeli intellectuals. Professor Danny Orbach, Dr. Jonathan Boxman, Dr. Yagil Henkin, and attorney Jonathan Braverman critically analyzed accusations of Israeli genocide, arguing that the propagandistic label of "genocide" was embraced by those "in love with propaganda" who refuse to acknowledge the complexity of the urban battlefield where the enemy uses civilians as human shields.

The key argument of opponents of historical analogies is that they ignore fundamental differences between the Holocaust and the war in Gaza. The Nazis sought the total annihilation of the Jewish people, whereas Israel, according to its defenders, makes significant efforts to minimize civilian casualties and is waging war against a terrorist organization, not against the Palestinian people. There was no military confrontation between Jews and Germans before the Holocaust, whereas the war in Gaza was preceded by the monstrous massacre perpetrated by Hamas and publicly celebrated on the streets of Gaza.

IV. International Debate: The Universality of "Never Again."

An equally sharp debate unfolded on the international stage over whether the principle of "never again" applies only to Jews or to all peoples, including Palestinians. A telling incident occurred in September 2025, when the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles published a social media post featuring an image of six intertwined hands, one of which bore the tattoo of an Auschwitz prisoner, with the caption: "Never again cannot mean only never again for Jews."

Two days later, the post was removed, and the museum apologized, explaining that the message was "easily open to misinterpretation by some as a political statement reflecting the current situation in the Middle East." This incident provoked outrage among human rights advocates. Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), called the removal "a troubling step backward" from the very lessons of the Holocaust, noting the irony: defenders of Israel's war assumed that condemnation of genocide should apply specifically to them.

Professor Ben Ratzkoff from Occidental College recalled that the phrase "never again for all" reflects the mainstream consensus of international Holocaust memory since the 1990s. The Stockholm Declaration of 2000, the founding document of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), affirmed that "the unprecedented character of the Holocaust will always hold universal meaning."

In practice, however, the universalist interpretation conflicts with political realities. In Germany, where Holocaust memory has become a cornerstone of national identity, it has gradually become a tool for disciplining dissent, especially regarding the Palestinian question. As critics note, Germany has constructed antisemitism as a separate, apolitical sin, detached from racism or structural power, which allows for the expression of extremely racist tendencies toward Palestinians.

Activists from the movement "Jewish Voice for Peace" speak of a paradox: in Germany, one can fight antisemitism only by supporting what many call genocide. The German state terrorizes the most vulnerable population groups who dare to defend universal principles, and in this discourse, nothing is more antisemitic than talking about Jews instead of talking to them.

V. Accusations of Genocide and Their Refutation.

The culmination of the discussion was the accusation that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. A UN commission found that Israel's actions correspond to four of the five characteristics of genocide: killing, causing bodily harm, creating conditions that could lead to death, and preventing births. According to data from late July 2025, the number of deaths in Gaza reached approximately 60,000, the wounded up to 200,000, and more than one million people became displaced. In late July, there were reports of nearly 150 deaths from starvation, including more than eighty children.

Israel categorically rejects these accusations. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the commission's report distorted and false, calling for the immediate dissolution of this investigative commission. Israeli officials maintain that the actions of the Israel Defense Forces are directed exclusively against Hamas terrorists, and the high numbers of casualties are explained by the group's use of civilian infrastructure and population as human shields.

In analytical materials, however, Israel's actions are characterized as an attempt to turn Gaza into a death camp of the twenty-first century. It is argued that Israeli strategy aims not only at destroying Hamas's military potential but also at completely erasing the historical memory of the Palestinian people. The systematic destruction of schools, universities, mosques, churches, cultural centers, and cemeteries is interpreted as an operation to erase identity.

The blockade on food, water, and medicine supplies, as well as the destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, is seen as a deliberate policy of using starvation as a weapon, intended to bring the population to a state where people stop fighting for their lives and sink into a psychology of submission.

VI. The Moral Dilemma and the Legacy of Trauma.

A Western press commentary observed that the terrible burden the Jewish people carry—the terrible memory of the Holocaust—haunts them so much that even contemplating a new strategy seems like a betrayal of sacred memory. The more uncompromising and rigid the policy becomes, the harder it is to approach it from the other side, and the higher the price paid for loyalty to the sacred plan.

The same commentary expressed the opinion that, over time, Gaza will be seen as another version of the Holocaust, where the descendants of the victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps will find themselves on the other side of history. Journalists address their friends in Israel with a warning that attempts to justify what is now widely recognized as war crimes constitute a failed strategy.

This dilemma is reflected in the position of survivors and their descendants. Many insist on the universal meaning of Holocaust memory. As noted in the removed post of the Los Angeles museum, Jews must not allow the trauma of their past to silence their conscience, and to be Jewish means to remember and to act.

However, as the reaction to this post shows, applying universalist logic to the current conflict proves politically unacceptable to many who see it as undermining the uniqueness of the Holocaust or, more importantly, as criticism of Israeli policy.

Conclusion.

The question of whether the historical memory of the Holocaust weighs on Israel's actions in Gaza cannot be reduced to a simple answer. It is clear that the collective trauma of the Jewish people who experienced the Holocaust is a powerful factor shaping Israeli security policy and threat perception. The aspiration to ensure that "never again" does not remain an empty slogan drives decisive action against any force proclaiming the destruction of the Jewish state as its goal.

However, this same memory also creates a moral obligation—the obligation not to allow the suffering of others, not to turn from victim into persecutor. It is around this obligation that the main debate unfolds. For critics of Israel, including many Jews in the diaspora and within the country, what is happening in Gaza is a betrayal of the universal lessons of the Holocaust. For its defenders, it is a tragic necessity of survival in a hostile environment, bearing no resemblance to Nazi crimes.

The debate over historical analogies is not only a debate about the past but also a struggle for the future. Not only Israel's image in the eyes of the international community depends on which interpretation prevails, but also how Israelis and diaspora Jews themselves will perceive their identity and their connection to history. One thing is clear: the memory of the Holocaust continues to exert a tremendous influence on contemporary politics, and this influence remains deeply contradictory, generating both justification for actions and moral criticism of them. Ultimately, each person provides their own answer to the question posed, based on their understanding of history, ethics, and the current situation.

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