NEW DELHI: ‘Never Again’ was a phrase we heard with regularity after the Holocaust, when six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
Last 7 October was a lazy Saturday morning for me. I was taking full advantage of an office holiday to sleep late.
Sometime around 8.30 a.m., I received a beep from my “Red Alert” app, which was designed to alert Israelis about incoming rockets fired by either Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
It is a life-saving system that alerts Israelis to get them into a shelter in sometimes less than a minute. I had it installed last year when I was in Tel Aviv. As usual, I forgot to uninstall it when I returned home.
The peace of that morning was punctured by a barrage of beeps, nearly 5,000 in total. At first, I thought the app was malfunctioning. The sound it makes is not pleasant nor should it be. It’s designed to get your attention.
I opened the X app and saw that thousands of rockets had been fired from Gaza and that Hamas terrorists had invaded Israeli territory. It soon became clear that the future of the Middle East would be forever altered.
“Never Again” was a phrase we heard with regularity after the Holocaust, when six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. It was first used by prisoners liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp and has since served as a reminder that we must be ever vigilant to the forces of hate, dehumanization, and divisiveness that can overwhelm us.
The 7/10 massacre taught us why we must keep saying “Never Again” again and again. It was the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust, when 1,200 men, women, children, and babies were murdered, and more than 250 taken hostage, with 101 remaining in captivity. The victims were not only Jews; Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists, too—individuals from 35 nations—were also, and continue to be, brutalized by Hamas.
I was convinced while watching 7/10 unroll that This was certainly the last straw. That at least now the world would be convinced about the barbarity Israel faces and will support the Jewish State. I was naive. That “sympathy” lasted a few weeks at best and then far too much of it switched to support for Hamas. Even more shocking was the open support for the terrorists—characterizing these killers, kidnappers, and rapists as the “resistance”—on college campuses, mostly in the West. The hate directed at Israel and, by extension, Jews had taken on a new and alarming dimension.
To be sure, Israel—a robust and fractious democracy forced to defend itself from aggression throughout its 76-year history—isn’t perfect. There are questions that will have to be asked after this war is over, and I am confident there will be a full accounting of what went wrong on 7/10.
The same will assuredly not happen with Hamas, a terrorist entity accountable to no one—except its funders and arms suppliers in Iran.
That is unfortunate, given it is Hamas that has deliberately put 2 million people in Gaza into harm’s way. Hamas knew exactly what would happen when it violated yet another ceasefire and provoked another war with Israel.
It knew many innocent Gazans would be killed when Israel exercised its right to defend itself. Its depraved leaders did not care, and, in fact, welcomed it.
Ending this war is simple. All Hamas has to do is lay down its arms and release the hostages.
However, it has rejected all attempts at a ceasefire and keeps making demands it knows Israel cannot agree to. Yet not a day goes by when Israel is criticized or condemned. Hamas is not subject to the same opprobrium.
It apparently does not matter that Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of all the world’s Jews, or that it has vowed to repeat 7/10 “again and again.” It seems not to matter to the world that Hamas abducted 250 hostages, of whom some 100 still remain.
Unfortunately, for those of us living in India, viewing images of the carnage from 7/10 was all too familiar. We have faced multiple terror attacks. One of the worst started on 26 November 2008. For three days, Islamist terrorists massacred innocent people across Mumbai from all religions, including Jews for the first time in India. I was a desk journalist those days, and I will never forget the screaming, the explosions in iconic buildings.
Indians were under the impression that since foreign citizens including Westerners were killed in Mumbai, there would be a better understanding of the terrorism threat India has been facing and that most of the world would help India fight it.
That did not happen—just like it has not happened now with Israel.
For many Indians, the war in Gaza is yet another conflict being fought thousands of miles away. India is not directly implicated so it is not top of mind. But it matters to me.
The Mumbai attacks were proof that extremist acts can happen anywhere, at any time, to anyone.
If we do not stand for Israel in its time of crisis, then we have no right to ask Israel to stand with us when those who sow hate, fear, and destruction strike in India. We must all take the never in “Never Again” to heart. Hamas has shown us what happens when we do not.
Arjun Hardas is India Representative, AJC (Asia Pacific Institute), New Delhi, India.