A light unto the enemies: Three dangerous lessons from the Holocaust - opinion

This week, Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day. There is no dispute that the Holocaust is a unique event in human history – a moral and historical rupture without parallel, and a foundational element in the creation of the State of Israel in its current form.

Therefore, and rightly so, Israel invests enormous effort in preserving its memory. Student delegations to Poland, ceremonies, museums, and educational programs – all of these are essential. But memory is not an end in itself; it is a means. So the real question, seldom asked, is: what have we learned?

Some of the lessons that have taken root in Israel are dangerous.

The first lesson is that the Jews have no one to rely on but themselves. The idea is that the world is at best indifferent, and at worst hostile to “a people that dwells alone.”

Israel cannot afford isolation. It is a relatively small country, surrounded by real threats, with an economy based on exports, innovation, and international cooperation. It needs allies, markets, and legitimacy.

Excessive (and self-imposed!) isolation is not independence but a recipe for erosion – economic, diplomatic, and, ultimately, also security-related. Because if Israel ceases to be an attractive place, it will gradually decline and become weaker.

The second lesson is even more troubling: that no matter what you do, there is nothing to apologize for.

The Holocaust is not only a Jewish story; it is a lesson about human nature. It is an extreme demonstration of what human beings are capable of when moral systems collapse. Mid-20th-century Germany did not invent human evil, but it took it to an organized, industrial, chilling extreme. Yet the potential for evil exists to varying degrees in every society.

If the lesson we take is that because we were victims, everything we do now is justified, that’s destructive. There is, of course, no comparison to the Nazis; there is no ideology of extermination here. But devaluation of human life – yes, that exists.

Moreover, a society that grows accustomed to disregarding the lives of others will ultimately disregard the lives of its own. Once, the very idea of a large-scale ground operation in Gaza – with heavy casualties among soldiers – would have caused deep reluctance. Once, the dozens of civilian deaths of the last Iran war would have caused shock. Today, public discourse accepts it all as a given.

The moral obligation is to ask: was there truly no choice? Was everything done to reduce the cost? Did we stop in time? I fear that the second lesson we have learned amounts to this: it is acceptable, given our history, to become brutes.

That brings us to the third unfortunate lesson: there is no need to explain.

The prevailing Israeli position is that there is no point in trying to persuade that Israel’s actions are justified because pretty much everyone expects those who agree already to be antisemitic, or progressive, or stupid, or European. This is not only cynical but directly and hugely harmful to Israel’s interests.

In meetings and TV appearances with colleagues around the world, I encountered an astonishing gap between the reality as Israelis see it and how it is perceived even by erstwhile friends. The dominant narrative is unequivocal: that Israel is trying to sabotage talks between the US and Iran and expand its borders while indiscriminately killing Lebanese civilians.

There are very good reasons to act against Hezbollah, but this false narrative is spread by a global propaganda machine pushing against the proverbial unguarded goal. And instead of coherent public diplomacy, Israel produces contradictory messages aimed mainly at the domestic audience.

This lack of coherence is destructive to Israel’s standing in the world – but no one seems to care or even notice, certainly not in the detached and hubristic government. Under the mistaken lessons that everyone is an enemy, there is nothing to apologize for, and there is no need to explain, Israel has almost completely stopped trying to win or retain support.

Particularly popular is contempt for Europe, the country’s primary trading partner. A simplistic narrative has taken hold that “Europe is lost.” Why? Because the EU has 6% Muslims (yes, really). In an astonishing display of foolishness, Israel behaves as though there is only one person it needs to persuade – the erratic, bizarre, unpopular, and temporary Donald Trump.

There is another way. The Holocaust might yield a more complex, more mature lesson. Not only “never again” in the security sense, but also “never again” in the moral sense. Not to push everyone away. Not to become brutes. Not to abandon discourse – even when the landscape is challenging, even when facing unfairness.

Not to abandon the Jewish idea of tikkun olam – “repairing the world” – even when it is difficult to even repair oneself.

Once, Israel wanted to be “a light unto the nations.” Today, that sounds almost naive – but the potential is still here, in civil society, in culture, in science, in the astounding, world-beating innovation. The alternative – cynicism, thuggishness, and withdrawal – is not only less pleasant, but also a light unto the enemies.