The four circles that allow evil against Jews to flourish
When I was growing up in the UK in the 1960s and ’70s, without a connection to any survivor, the Holocaust was more history than memory. I was aware of some of the facts and figures, and my knowledge grew as I studied more and visited Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum.
I had thought of history as recording our species’ trajectory from the barbarism of the Stone Age to morality, justice, cultural advancement and the respect for others we expect in modern society. But the extermination of one-third of the world’s Jews so clearly defied that paradigm that it seemed to have occurred while the normal laws of human progress vanished, as if history were suspended for its duration. How could our progress so suddenly be reversed in the 20th century? How could it happen in modern Europe? How could it come from the most cultured and educated country of all, Germany?
Although Edmund Burke is (wrongly) believed to have claimed, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, the truth is a little more complicated. Evil will flourish when there are at least three other concentric circles, or groups, of people who gain ascendancy in society.
First, there needs to be the evil individuals capable of the most unspeakable crimes against fellow human beings. Then there is a wider circle of those who are aware of the evil yet support and celebrate it, fuelled by hatred of the victims. Beyond those are the ones who do not support the heinous acts but consider them to be justified. Finally there are those who do nothing, who feel obliged to remain strictly neutral in the battle between good and evil.
The fact each of these four groups was a separate prerequisite for evil to flourish has always been society’s built-in safeguard against a collapse of civilisation. So my knowledge of the Holocaust was accompanied by a nagging sense of bewilderment.
I could not understand how, in our enlightened age, this safeguard could fail. How could any of these groups exist at all, let alone gain power in combination at the same time? But now I understand. In the past three weeks we have been granted an insight into what went so indescribably wrong in the 1930s and ’40s, since precisely the same four groups have reappeared. Yet again, their evil and hatred are directed against Jews.
It is dangerous to label people or movements as Nazis. But for Hamas, the description is accurate. Hamas has shown it is not terrorist (but not militants either – take note BBC editors). Terrorists use terror to achieve political ends. For Hamas, terror is the end in itself. A destruction of infrastructure or an attack on a small number of victims would have had far more political effect than the mass slaughter it inflicted. Hamas meticulously worked out and executed a plan with the only intention being to murder, torture and kidnap Jews.
Although the West continually fails to understand this, Hamas’s demands cannot be met halfway because it seeks the eradication of the Jewish people. For the first time since 1945, Nazism has returned to power. It is perhaps even worse. The Nazis had some sense of shame and tried to hide their deeds; Hamas livestreamed theirs. Now I understand the existence of true evil.
But the reappearance of Nazis and Nazism was not a surprise. We know the ideology was not vanquished at the end of World War II. It lay dormant, waiting for time to pass before it resurfaced.
What has been so frightening for Jews and all right-minded people has been the reaction to the worst pogrom in modern Jewish history. Demonstrators on city streets, professors and students in elite universities and imams in mosques have cheered on Hamas.
There was no doubt as to what had happened; more than 1400 Jews had been murdered. More than 200 had been kidnapped. Parents and children had been tortured in front of each other. Women were raped. This is what was being celebrated. With no trace of irony, champions of social justice, warriors against offensive microagressions were lauding horrific murders. Now I can understand how the second circle – those in Germany or among their allies who praised acts of evil because the victims were Jews – could have held such sway.
The third circle is distinct from the second but was no less essential for the Holocaust to occur. Beyond the cheerleaders are those who find murders distasteful and declare they should not take place but in this case it is understandable for “they did not come out of a vacuum”. After all, the Jews are the Gazans’ “occupiers” (though Israel removed every soldier and citizen from Gaza in 2005). And hasn’t Israel “laid siege” to Gaza? (No. After Hamas seized power and began firing rockets at Israeli civilians, Israel established a blockade against imports of military equipment, while providing hundreds of tonnes of aid every day).
But, say some, the Jews cannot be fully believed. Just as in medieval times they were accused of ritual murder and imprisoned or hanged because they could not satisfactorily prove their innocence, so now when Hamas declares that Israel killed hundreds when it destroyed a hospital in Gaza, the world’s media reports the claim as fact and, for many, this only confirms Israel’s criminal character. And when Western intelligence agencies confirm beyond doubt that Israel was not involved, that no hospital was destroyed and the tragic victims were numbered in the dozens, not hundreds, many continue to insist the Jews are guilty or perhaps the “matter remains in dispute”.
In the battle for credibility, the people who prefer the word of Hamas, the baby killers, over that of Israel place themselves into the third circle, previously inhabited not by supporters of the Holocaust but by its justifiers. The existence of this circle today enables us to understand its presence 80 years ago.
As for the fourth circle – the “men who do nothing”, so quick to preach how we should vote, what we should agree with and what we must decry – when Jews are murdered and tortured, they insist on neutrality. Those we thought were our friends, in politics or in other faith communities, those institutions we admired, refer vaguely to “events in the Middle East”. They say they cannot condemn Hamas’s massacre of Jews because “that would offend others” (that is, people who support the atrocities, who perhaps deserve to be offended). And they exclaim that given that hundreds of Gazans have died, it would be wrong to highlight one set of victims at the expense of another.
Let us be clear. The death of any innocent person on either side of this war is a tragedy. But equality of tragedy does not imply equality of culpability. There is no comparison, let alone an equivalence, between the sad death of a child caught in the crossfire of a war that inevitably leads to civilian losses and that of a child murdered and mutilated by Hamas terrorists systematically seeking Jews to kill. Those whose ignorance or stupidity leads them to believe the two represent tit for tat or constitute a cycle of violence are morally delinquent.
Thankfully, we have not witnessed another Holocaust. One-third of our people have not been destroyed. Today the people of Israel have an army to defend them and to show the world that Jewish blood is not cheap.
One feature of Holocaust teaching stresses the universal aspect – how we should learn not to be prejudiced against any race or grouping. In the past 80 years mankind has made great strides in these areas. This message of the Holocaust has been learnt. But the other message that reminds us of the evils of anti-Semitism, and how the Jews have been despised and dispersed, denied justice and treated as society’s scapegoats, has not been internalised so well.
And so today, in a manner unprecedented since 1945, Jews feel under attack. Not just from the murderers but also from the murderers’ supporters, their justifiers and those who insist on staying neutral in a battle between good and evil. For the first time since the war these groups, these circles, are all visibly in place. And the Holocaust no longer generates a sense of bewilderment. Now I can understand how Jews were murdered in their millions and the world cheered, explained or just turned the other way.
Rabbi James Kennard is the principal of Mount Scopus Memorial College in Melbourne.
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