Understanding October 7 in Light of the Holocaust

So many events of October 7 were like scenes from the Holocaust. Jewish communities devastated as hundreds of Jews are murdered by killing squads in a single day. Parents killed in front of their children and children murdered in front of their parents, old people and children burnt alive. This massacre was so devastating that, understandably, the Holocaust is being invoked to assess it.

The most important insight generated by the association of October 7 and the Holocaust was the end of an illusion. 

The most important insight generated by the association of October 7 and the Holocaust was the end of an illusion. For decades, Israel dealt with Hamas as a troubling movement which could be contained — albeit that it disrupted life in the South and in Israel at large from time to time. On October 7, the people of Israel awoke to realize that — like the Nazis — Hamas was seriously committed to its principles of destroying the Jewish state and killing Jews everywhere. Out of this moment of moral clarity, an Israeli national consensus emerged to destroy Hamas’s fighting machine and end its governing of Gaza — whatever the cost.

 However, we must control our shock and our intense Holocaust memories to avoid overreaction or despair. For example, in Israel, some have said that the Jewish state turned “never again” into an empty slogan — since more Jews were killed on this day than on any single day since the Holocaust. Others wrote that the state of Israel is a failure. After all, Israel’s main function is to prevent the recurrence of mass murder of Jews — and it failed to do so. 

The despairing outcries that the Shoah is back are wrong. The terrible failure of October 7 must not be allowed to override the extraordinary achievements of 75 years. 

The Holocaust occurred because the enemies killed thousands of Jews day after day — particularly over five war years. Unchecked, the Nazi assault eventually claimed six million powerless victims. The state of Israel was created to give Jews the power to prevent genocide. After the October 7 massacre, within a couple of days, the IDF eliminated more than 1,500 of the killers who rampaged through southern Israel. 

In the years of its existence, Israel rescued millions of Jews from persecution or death. Israel made Jewish life more valuable by reversing past history. In the Holocaust years, Jews were less likely to get permission to relocate or attain a haven to save their lives. Thanks to Israel and other governments it recruited, in the ‘80s and ‘90s in the Soviet Union and Ethiopia and in the 2020s in Ukraine, Jews (or their families) were more likely to get aid and a chance to emigrate and remove themselves from harm’s way. 

The Jewish state offered a haven for Jews worldwide through the Law of Return. Endangered partial descendants of Jews were offered unconditional rescue. Recently, the two religious parties in the extremist ruling coalition sought to cut this lifeline. Hopefully, after this war, the full importance of offering safety to people threatened because of their connection to Jewry will be reasserted and the Law of Return fully upheld.

The main expression of Jewry’s commitment to “never again” allow a Holocaust to happen was Israel’s taking political and military power into Jewish hands. But exercising power does not assure that Jews will never again be persecuted and killed. Having power means that Jews can defend themselves and that the value of Jewish lives can be restored. 

Taking power is widely misunderstood. Strength is not a guarantee of safety. As long as there are genocidal enemies out there, Jews are vulnerable. In a way, we have been lulled into complacency by Israel’s incredible success in reducing Jewish losses for 75 years.  We have grown used to wars in which Jewish casualties were a fraction of our enemies’.  Think of the invention of the Iron Dome which neutralized the threat of rockets amassed by Hamas and Hezbollah. These rockets could have killed thousands — no, tens of thousands. (In retrospect, shame on us for treating it as normal that residents of southern Israel lived under continuous rocket fire all these years.)

As long as enemies relentlessly pursue the destruction of the Jews, there was bound to be some time or place when our side lowered its guard or malfunctioned— and the enemy took advantage to torture and massacre. This is in no way intended to minimize the government and military failures which made October 7 possible. After the war, an investigation will be held and those responsible will be held accountable. The IDF has always learned lessons from its failures and improved future performance. But as long as antisemitism rages — as it does especially in Muslim cultures now — there will be future assaults on Jews. The price of power is eternal vigilance and, tragically, some home front casualties, as well as death and damage to our defenders. 

Part of the tragedy in the Holocaust was that the Nazis paid little or no price as they annihilated the Jews. The deaths of the powerless victims only increased the vulnerability and suffering of the rest of the Jews. Israel reversed that. The deaths of the defenders and the IDF soldiers who are fighting back are unbearable and heartbreaking but their sacrifices bring more security and dignity to the rest of the Jews. 

We learned in the Holocaust that we live in a world where there is unlimited power available to the murderers. As we believe that life must go on — our religion teaches us to work so that life will win out over death in this world — we had no choice but to take up the burden and costs of taking power to neutralize the evildoers. Fighting radical evil and paying the price of standing up in defense of life is our destiny going forward. This is why remembering the Holocaust is a central guide to policy and morality— for the rest of the world (and all potential victims) as for us. This is why it was so important to push for a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the National Mall. 

Our choice to rebuild and live did not change the reality that in this harsh world, there are powerful forces willing or wanting to destroy the Jews. I confess that I, among many others, believed that the vicious and inhumane behavior of the Nazis was so odious that antisemitism would be suppressed for a long time. Antisemites would be leery of being labeled as followers and allies of Nazi teachings. This umbrella of moral outrage and shame actually lasted for less than one generation in the West. Antisemitism has come into the open both verbally and in violence. In the Muslim world, the barriers against antisemitism and genocide were swept aside by the spread of radical Islam and jihadism. The poisonous fruit of that development is Hamas: An organization dedicated from its founding to wipe out the state of Israel and kill Jews all over the world. 

To live with dignity, we have to fight antisemitism in all countries and in all forms. In this fight, the state of Israel will be our concern and our major weapon. Our concern, because the antisemites seek to delegitimate Israel by demonizing and isolating it. Israel is already the “Jew among nations.”’ The Muslim nations and their allies (especially in the U.N.) have drawn upon conspiratorial, antisemitic tropes in an attempt to place it beyond the pale. At the same time, Israel will be a major weapon against antisemitism because its world leadership in medicine, technology, irrigation, and cybersecurity dramatizes that Jewry is (as promised to Abraham) a “blessing for all the families of the earth.” (Genesis 12:3.) 

Israel will continue to be a model in the exercise of power with ethical restraint because we remember what it was like to be persecuted by unlimited power. Even as the IDF invades Gaza, it strives to minimize civilian casualties, in tactics as well as in munitions. Hamas’s sheer barbarism and cruelty for cruelty’s sake has convinced the whole country that it must be wiped out. Everyone understands that if Hamas won a war against Israel, such tortured deaths would be the fate of every Jew in Israel. Still, the IDF’s actions are driven not by revenge but by the need to restore life and security in Israel and stop future massacres. 

After the Holocaust, the greatest assault of death forces on Jewish life ever, Jewry was driven to build Israel and unleash the greatest outburst of life and creativity in our history. After October 7 and this war, Israel and world Jewry will respond by raising Jewish life and the Jewish state to the highest levels of dignity, equality and humanity ever.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg serves as the President of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life (JJGI) and as Senior Scholar in Residence at Hadar.