bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Alex Lo

The famous Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson once told a class at the University of Toronto that if you were a German in the 1930s, you would be a Nazi too.
He was absolutely right. I know I would. Being a coward, I would probably have taken the easy way out and joined the party.
My question is, would Peterson have been a Nazi? And how would he know?
When Israel first launched its current invasion of Gaza, he tweeted: “Give ’em hell @netanyahu [Benjamin Netanyahu]. Enough is enough.”
Does he still stand by his tweet after 21,000-plus Palestinians killed and 56,000-plus injured and maimed?
Turkey’s Erdogan compares Israel’s Netanyahu to Hitler
“I didn’t know” couldn’t be an excuse. Everyone who knew something about the Palestine conflict knew Israel’s response was always going to be unimaginable.
However, for humans and for nations, there is a line you don’t cross. That line may be invisible and deniable, but we all know it’s there. Once you have crossed it, there is no coming back.
Israel has crossed that line in the eyes of the world. That’s not antisemitism. It’s simple humanity.
Israel may have the right to defend itself, perhaps even retaliate for revenge. I would do the same. If you came into my house and murdered my family, I would want to kill you and perhaps your whole family, too. An eye for an eye; or my eye for 10 of your family’s.
However, if I went on to level your entire neighbourhood and killed your neighbours and friends and even people you didn’t know – because you were “hiding” among them – and made the whole place uninhabitable, there could be no justification for that in any religion or system of morality.
Don’t ask or demand the world to understand and condone your rage and feign outrage when many of us say, “No, you can’t do that! You are out of control and must be stopped; and your ever faithful friend America is not doing you or itself any favour by arming you with more weapons to fuel your murderous rage.”
There is a deep historical irony here. Over the decades, Jews and Americans have taught the world about the sacred lessons of the Holocaust and the message of “never again”. They have drummed it into our conscience. The whole world now knows we must never let something so horrible happen again, ever.
South Africa files World Court case accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ in Gaza
But for many Jews and Americans, the real lessons have been more particular, namely “never again” means Jews must never be threatened and mass-murdered, and “never again” will America abandon the Jewish people.
So now, the world is caught in a moral-tragic struggle between the universal and particular lessons of the Holocaust. Israel wants to exterminate the threat and the US is standing by it. The rest of the world cannot accept extermination as a solution, and rightly so.
Some Israeli leaders, both military and civilian, have openly described Palestinians as “animals”. But Palestinian UN representative Riyad Mansour was right when he said: “We are not subhumans.”
Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer who sang for his people, Dr Hammam Alloh who tended to the severely wounded even after all medicine ran out, Belal Jadallah, the “godfather of Palestinian journalism” who taught a whole generation to take up the pen rather than the gun – were they animals?
They and so many like them were killed in Israeli air strikes. Their lives were flickering lights for humanity extinguished all too quickly in these dark times.
Why do the pro-genocidal US-British mainstream media keep demonising the human and humanising the inhumane?
If those Palestinians were animals, what am I? A cockroach?
Remember the anguished words of Yitzhak Rabin after he reluctantly shook the hand of Yasser Arafat at the White House: “Enough is enough. Enough blood.” I remember because I watched it live on TV.
Remember the haunting words of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: “Where should we go after the last frontier? Where should birds fly after the last sky?”


Taiwan has just sold out TSMC and half its chips industry to the US

The days of EU and Nato may be numbered under von der Leyen and Kallas

Native forest restoration project is literally, and figuratively, bearing fruit

Eye-opening court judgment a snapshot of issues that have plagued Hong Kong for years

My Take

The world must act now to make Israel stop its assault on Gaza

A pro-Palestinian demonstration at Hermann square in Berlin Neukoelln, on Sunday. The sign reads ‘No New Year’s Eve For Gaza’. Photo: dpa via AP

Israel-Gaza war: Turkey’s Erdogan compares Netanyahu to Hitler

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives a security briefing with commanders and soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip, on Monday. Photo: Avi Ohayon/GPO via Reuters

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Photo: AFP

Israel expands Gaza offensive, as Hamas claims 195 Palestinians killed in 24 hours: ‘it was a night of hell’

Palestinians recover a body from the rubble of a destroyed house following an Israeli air strike in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: EPA-EFE

Palestinian Ibrahim Al-Haj Youssef, who lost four of his children and his wife in an Israeli air strike, stands amid debris, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at the Maghazi camp, in the central Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters

Opinion

‘Never again’ for all people or Jews only? That’s the moral-tragic struggle between the universal and particular lessons of the Holocaust


‘Never again’ for all people or Jews only? That’s the moral-tragic struggle between the universal and particular lessons of the Holocaust.


Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

.css-1m2rp1p{color:#34b8b5;}My Take | The world must act now to make Israel stop its assault on Gaza

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}‘Never again’ for all people or Jews only? That’s the moral-tragic struggle between the universal and particular lessons of the Holocaust

My Take | The world must act now to make Israel stop its assault on Gaza

‘Never again’ for all people or Jews only? That’s the moral-tragic struggle between the universal and particular lessons of the Holocaust