The Ghost of the Holocaust during the Second World War still haunts us. There had been rumors of the Nazi concentration camps before those camps were found and "liberated". At that time the Western world was confronted with the images, not only of the slaughter, but also the reality of the cremation ovens and the faces and bodies of the survivors. The Western world was horrified, not only at the brutality but also by the reality of the results of the long-standing antisemitism that had existed in the Western world for generations.
History of Human Slaughter
This was not the first example of human beings slaughtering other human beings in the world, nor would it be the last. Invading and occupying armies had used mass slaughter as a means of not only establishing domination, but also as a means of control and punishment. Sometimes it had been at the hands of an autocrat or dictator, sometimes at the hands of colonizers and sometimes as a means of ethnic cleansing.
We had seen examples during war, such as the Japanese in Nanking at the beginning of World War II, or the slaughter of prisoners by those at war. We had seen the destruction of indigenous peoples by colonizers in Australia, in North, South and Central America during the 18th and 19th centuries. We had seen the slaughter and subjugation of Africans by white colonizers during the 19th and 20th centuries. We had seen the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians in Turkey in the 20th century. We had seen the scourges in Russia under Stalin. And there was the ethnic cleansing in Ruanda not that long ago. The ruthlessness of human beings has been in full display for centuries, and most recently by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Gaza
Gaza is the most shocking since it is being televised and reported, moment by moment, to the entire world. There is nothing abstract or removed by history, it is happening by the moment in full view of all of humanity.
And how does the world react? With horror! However, by careful manipulation of the rules and laws, the dominant world power, the US, has been able to protect Israel and its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, from any international consequences or intervention. The world, including the United Nations, stands by helplessly as the US, not only condones what is occurring but also provides the weapons and resources for the continuing destruction. Even the humanitarian organizations and impulses of the UN and the Western nations are defunded and stopped at the borders at the behest of Israel, while the population if Gaza, without food, or water, or medical supplies or hospitals, much less schools or religious institutions, or even houses, is compressed into a smaller and smaller area, waiting for the final, apparently inevitable destruction.
Comparisons
If we compare the earlier attempts at ethnic or racial cleansing in the world, for example, the ravages of slavery in the US, or the destruction of the Native Americans in the name of progress and the rights of colonial expansion to the Holocaust of World War II, we see how weak the charges of racism are as a defense against accountability for any of those groups, in comparison to any charge of antisemitism. But somehow, we are to give Israel and Netanyahu a pass, requiring no accountability by simply uttering the word "antisemitism" and bringing forth the Ghost of the Holocaust. It boggles the mind.
These forces in the West have even gone so far as to stifle any show of support for the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, with students in the US being punished and people losing their jobs, or not being able to speak out as they had before. It is like a new McCarthyism. All of this while holding up the Ghost of the Holocaust as a defense, the specter of antisemitism is brought forward to haunt and distract the world, as somehow a justification for the slaughter of an entire population in Gaza.
The Jewish Holocaust under the Nazis during World War II has been seared into the Western mind by the fact that it was revealed and documented because of what the allied armies found when they liberated the concentration camps. All of this to show the inhumanity of "the enemy". This was different from earlier situations since none of those earlier situations had been stopped, survivors saved, bodies documented in real time. No one had stepped in to save and document the destruction of the American Indian population, or American slaves, or in the Philippines, or Cuba under American occupation, or to the Armenians, to any earlier group or to any since, until we have arrived at the current crisis in Gaza.
Permanent Victimhood
But the Holocaust in World War II seemed different since the survivors had been saved by our heroes from an inhuman enemy, the Nazis. There was also the fact that Jews were white Europeans. And since the destruction could be so dramatically documented in real time it could become a sacred symbol of inhumanity, allowing Jewishness to morph into a kind of symbol of permanent victimhood. As a result, the Jews, as victims of that particular slaughter, were enshrined as symbolic victims of such abuse. In the process they were given special status as the victimized and therefore deserving of special treatment.
Another element of the Holocaust phenomenon was a recognition of cumulative Western guilt for its past and continuing antisemitism. The result was a need for some act of atonement, in this case supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine as that act of atonement. The other element of this was to avoid the need to integrate a Jewish population back into Western society by exporting it to a Western colony in the Middle East. This is much like the abortive efforts of the US trying to find a place in Africa as a homeland for the former slaves.
The problem with the role of victim is that it requires that you never move past the victimizing event; instead you use that event as a defining moment and stop all future development in its tracks. The benefit of such a role is that you are removed from the ordinary dynamics and accountability of life, you are frozen in the moment of your victimization. And since no one else can really understand that reality, you get to occupy a special place, outside of normal human life, unique and separate and therefore, not accountable in the normal ways for any actions you might take. To attack Jews or Israel is to besmirch their very sacredness; therefore they cannot be held accountable. Their claim to victimhood puts them outside the ordinary requirements of other humans. This provides a way to weaponize victimhood so it can be used as justification and cover for any act that the civilized world might not understand or approve of. This provides a means to weaponize the Holocaust as a justification for nearly any Jewish action.
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