By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California — Mark Twain famously said, “History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.”
In the 2014 Gaza-Israeli War, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel placed an advertisement in the New York Times comparing Hamas to the Nazis. The headline of his ad read, “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn.”
Not to be undone, Jewish leftists sympathetic to Hamas paid for a new New York Times ad, which had the signature of 40 Holocaust survivors and 287 names of their descendants accusing Israel of “ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people.”
As we give pause to Mark Twain’s pithy insight, this week, the world will be memorializing the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht Nacht, which occurred on November 9-10th, 1938.
Kristallnacht, often referred to as the “Night of Broken Glass,” was a pogrom against Jews carried out by The Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung (SA) who targeted Jewish civilians throughout Nazi Germany. It served as a critical juncture that led to the Nazi regime’s escalating campaign of persecution culminating in the Holocaust.
Why did the Nazis choose this particular date?
While I was a young rabbi, about 37 years ago, I once heard the Holocaust rescuer Hermann Friedrich Graebe speak in San Francisco, who related how early on in 1938, he publicly criticized the Nazi Party, and after speaking out against them, he was sentenced to a short-term in prison. This all happened after Kristallnacht, and the Nazis sent him a letter that told him November 9th was the anniversary of Martin Luther’s death.
Martin Luther “Set fire to their synagogues or schools,” Martin Luther recommended in On the Jews and Their Lies. Jewish houses should “be razed and destroyed,” and Jewish “prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, [should] be taken from them.” In addition, “their rabbis [should] be forbidden to teach on pain of loss of life and limb.”
Still, this wasn’t enough.
Luther also urged that “safe conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews,” and that “all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them.” What Jews could do was to have “a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade” put into their hands so “young, strong Jews and Jewesses” could “earn their bread by the sweat of their brow.”
Kristallnacht represented a drastic shift in Nazi policy from discrimination to overt, state-endorsed violence against Jews, signaling a move toward more extreme persecution. It revealed the government’s complicity in antisemitic violence, setting a precedent for legalized hate crimes. The German public’s muted reaction to the violence suggested a desensitization that facilitated future atrocities. Following the pogrom, the Nazis rapidly increased legal oppression, isolating Jews and laying the groundwork for their eventual deportation to death camps.
Kristallnacht essentially served as a harbinger of the Holocaust, testing the limits of Nazi aggression and prefiguring the “Final Solution.” The tepid international response post-Kristallnacht may have further convinced the Nazis of their impunity, contributing to the escalation toward genocide.
The same kind of psychological desensitization can be seen in the Western world since the great massacre of October 7, 2023. The depersonalization of the Jews of Israel has occurred for nearly a hundred years or more.
Fast forward to October 8, 2023
Almost immediately after October 7, 2023, on college campuses across the United States, including institutions like Columbia, Cornell, and Yale, there have been instances where faculty members have shockingly referred to the attacks by Hamas with positive adjectives such as “awesome”[1] and “exhilarating,”[2] or have marked the events as “an extraordinary day.”[3]
All this occurred as the new Islamo-Nazis cut open the stomachs of pregnant women and threw unborn infants into an oven or ripped apart the elderly body of a Holocaust survivor, raped young female teenagers—whether alive or dead—and a host of other barbaric crimes against innocent civilians. This is something the academic and liberal world much rather ignore than confront and eradicate.
Philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” By this thought, Santayana means that if we do not learn from our past mistakes, we are likely to repeat them in the future.
Muslim countries and their allies refused to acknowledge that Hamas did anything wrong by attacking Jewish innocents. Countries like Russia deny Israel the right to defend themselves against such horrendous acts of barbarity.
More often than not, we hear about how the misuse of emotionally and historically charged terms like “genocide,” “Nazi,” and “fascist” has become problematic, as well as other terms that are frequently used inappropriately in political discourse. Throughout the Israeli-Hamas war, we have heard much about how Israel is committing “genocide,” even though suffering pales in comparison to China’s treatment of Uyghurs which, despite its severity, may not meet the classical definition of genocide.
Yet, the media and 150 nations of the world have given the world the misimpression that Israel is destroying over two million Palestinians. Israel intentionally kills only the Hamas. Israel does its best to save human life, but there is no war where there isn’t a measure of collateral damage. Israel fights to defend their people, and Hamas uses human shields to defend themselves from Israeli soldiers.
But is there a war of genocide here?
Unfortunately, there is. Article 7 of the Hamas chart leaves no doubt:
- “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
- Saleh al-Raqab, a professor of religion at Gaza’s Islamic University and a former minister of religious affairs and endowments in the Hamas government, published an article on October 8, the day after the brutal assault in which 1,400 Israelis were killed, titled “Oh Mujahideen in Palestine.” “O Allah, grant victory to the fighters in Palestine, guide their strikes to the throats of Jews, make their legs steady and let them stab a knife through the hearts [of the Jews],” al-Raqab wrote. “Enable them to kill the soldiers of the Jews, destroy the weapons of the Jews, and capture Jewish soldiers. O Allah, destroy the Jews completely. Paralyze their limbs and freeze the blood in their veins.”[4]
- Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi threatened, ‘We will drink your blood; what Hitler did to you was a joke. You will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke – come on, we are waiting for you.”
Yes, the real genocide is not coming from Israel, but from Palestinians and supporters who wish to murder every Jew in Israel and abroad.
Kristallnacht reminds us that Jews everywhere must make sure no tyrant ever attempts to destroy the Jewish people again. Now, we have the means to stop them.
[1] Columbia professor praises Hamas attacks on civilians – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)
[2] Cornell Professor “Exhilarated” by Hamas’s Attack Defends Remark – The Cornell Daily Sun (cornellsun.com)
[3] Petition calls for Yale prof’s removal after anti-Israel posts (ctinsider.com)
[4] Pro-Hamas Islamic scholars issue calls, fatwas inciting murder of Israelis and Jews | The Times of Israel
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Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista. He may be contacted via michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com