JEWS AREN’T ASKING YOU. THEY’RE TELLING YOU.

WORTH REPEATING: "NEVER AGAIN" IS NOT A REQUEST. THE DAYS OF JEWS POLITELY ASKING NOT TO BE KILLED ARE OVER.

I POSTED THIS PIECE EXACTLY FOUR MONTHS AGO, AND IT BECAME ONE OF MY MOST READ AND SHARED ARTICLES. GIVEN THE NEW WAR WITH IRAN, I THOUGHT IT WAS WORTH REVISITING.

When we say “Never again,” we’re not asking you. We’re telling you.

This was a meme I saw recently. I was gobsmacked.

I’m not sure if Michael Dickson, the executive director of StandWithUs Israel, on whose socials I saw it, formulated the phrase. But I wish I had thought of it.

It’s a provocative statement. And so it should be. The status quo in the world today — vis-à-vis Israel and Jews — needs some serious provoking.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day this year, a friend posted a memorial meme on her Facebook. One person popped up to ask if “Never Again” wasn’t supposed to mean for everyone, including the Gazans who were, in her opinion, being genocided by Israel.

Imagine how despicable a human being you would have to be to go out of your way to terrorize a Jewish “friend” on Holocaust remembrance day by falsely accusing the Jewish state of doing to others the atrocities that were perpetrated on the Jewish people. You really have to wonder if there are no depths to which the virtuous activists for social justice will not sink.

The perpetrators of the “Gaza Genocide” hoax may or may not believe a genocide is actually happening. If they do believe it, they are ignorant of either the definition of the term or what is happening in Gaza, or both. If they don’t believe it but use it as a weapon, they are sadists, not human rights activists.

But back to the statement at the start.

The rebirth of the state of Israel took place three years after the end of the Holocaust. There is a false cause and effect between these two historical events that I have written about before but, put simply, Israel was not a “consolation prize” for the Holocaust, as some people portray it. But this is not my main point today.

The period from 1945 to 1948 represented one of the greatest transformations in human history. It was a moment, we recognize in hindsight, when a people who for two millennia had been a victimized, vilified and stateless people whose fate was always at the whims of the majority among whom they lived, transformed into a self-determined, strong, self-reliant people capable of defending themselves.

Yes, in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, “Never Again” may have been a plea from the victims — a two-word warning from those who experienced the worst of humanity to warn the rest of humanity about our collective potential for evil.

We know from Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, the Rohingya, Yazidis and Uyghurs that, as a universal warning of human capability, this plea has been ignored.

We also know, from the particular Jewish experience, that such pleas have not brought empathy or allyship for Jews or Israelis in the face of the eight-decade genocidal campaign by certain Arab and Iranian forces.

I have gone from being someone pretty close to a pacifist to someone who believes that a massively armed Israel is the only real hope to prevent another genocide of Jews.

It’s not only Jews I am concerned with, despite what some of my interlocutors assert. I firmly believe in the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which I am proud to say exists partly because of Canadian idealism. But R2P takes force. And I have no time for rose-tinted idiots like the former friend of mine who recently commented on my socials “It’s always a good time for peace.” No. Sometimes it’s a good time for force.

A teacher at a Jewish school in Vancouver told me that, when they were teaching about how the Allies chose not to blow up the rail lines to Auschwitz, a student asked, “Why didn’t Israel blow up the railway lines?”

It is a simple, naïve, heartbreaking question from a kid. And as much as any single idea can, this kid’s innocent question (related to me second-hand) explains why I am a Zionist.

Alas, Israel came a few years too late.

If what I’ve said already hasn’t set your hair on fire, get the extinguisher because, inevitably, I will be accused of not caring about Palestinian lives. (And now just wait for the usual suspects to start the waterworks about an Israeli genocide of Iranians and, probably, the right of the ayatollahs to nuclear arms.)

I do care about dead innocents. But I sure as hell don’t need to prove it to people who falsely accuse Israel of perpetrating a genocide against them.

But here is my point: If you actually cared about Palestinian lives, you would be a Zionist too. Ensuring the safety and security of Israel would ensure the safety and security of Palestinians.

To put a finer point on it: If you want to stop Palestinians from dying, tell them and their leaders, and the broader Arab polity, the dictators and tyrants of Muslim countries, and the millions worldwide who seem to be completely on board with their genocidal anti-Jewish agenda to back off. Because that is what will stop Palestinians from dying.

When the Palestinians and the broader Arab world are willing to live in peace, there will be peace. They are the only ones who can make peace because they are the only ones who are making war.

Israel is the last stand of the Jewish people. I know that statement animates people who think, like the decomposing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, that if all Jews would move to Israel it would prevent him and his friends from having to “hunt them down worldwide,” as he said before he was himself hunted down. LOL. I know that when people chant “From the river to the sea …” they recognize, like Jews do, that Israel is the Jewish people’s last stand. They just differ on how that story should end.

But Nasrallah is well and truly dead (as are many of Iran’s top military leaders and nuclear scientists, as of this week) and Israel is surviving and thriving.

Israel will not be defeated. They have mastered asymmetrical warfare and, put simply, they are smarter, more strategic and more motivated than their enemies. Israel’s enemies are motivated by race-hatred. Israelis are motivated by survival.

So the world has a choice: Accept the existence of Israel — or accept more generations of Palestinians as cannon fodder.

And if you choose the latter, do not blame Israel.

Do not blame the Jews.

Blame yourself.

Because when Israelis say, “Never Again,” they are not asking you. They are telling you.