Jewish history is blinding us Israelis to the suffering in Gaza

“What should we learn from the murder of six million Jews?” my Israeli high school teacher asked each Holocaust Memorial Day. The response came like a liturgy: “Remember and never forget,” followed by the familiar chorus: “We must never let it happen again. That’s why we need a strong army to defend us.”

The post-Holocaust Jewish identity has been forged by millennia of persecution, where survival itself became a form of resistance. Almost every holiday retells the story: we were strangers, we were hunted, we endured.

Yet, in that classroom, I couldn’t stop thinking about my grandparents’ survival and how their suffering had been conscripted into a narrative of strength through force. I stayed silent as Holocaust memory was transformed into justification for endless militarisation. The question I was too afraid to ask then demands an answer now: does surviving genocide grant us license to inflict suffering – or does it obligate us to prevent it?

Voices: Jewish history is blinding us Israelis to the suffering in Gaza

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