Never Again?

VEYRIER, Switzerland — In a leafy glade straddling the French border, among headstones chiseled with the Star of David, it aches to see a world sleepwalk toward what may be another great war with the same intolerance and apathy that sparked the last one.

Reality bites hard in haunting silence at the Cimetière Israélite among victims of an elected madman who during my lifespan exterminated millions of Jews and other “non-Aryans.”

In nearby Annemasse, France, the municipality is restoring torture cells Nazis built in the old Hôtel Pax. Peace Hotel. Young women in the Resistance imprisoned there chose awful death rather than reveal escape routes that saved Jewish children.

The Maison de Mémoire recalls those forgotten words: Never Again. Yet in Israel and Gaza, opposing forces kill innocents en masse. Some soldiers under that Star of David use torture to interrogate. In the West Bank, Jewish settlers evoke a dreaded memory: pogroms.

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Some tombs, still tended lovingly by survivors, are inscribed Rosen-something. That hit me hard. But reporters should be not tokens of any specific identity, especially now when so much is at stake. Ground truth is vital, even when it hurts.

We all need to see past loaded words to larger realities. "Genocide" was coined in 1941 to describe systematic ethnic cleansing. But its Greek roots mean any large-scale killings, which create hatreds that risk hardening into unstoppable conflict.

The little-noticed graveyard is on the outskirts of Geneva, a lovely lakeside city of disparate parts, which functions as smoothly as a Swiss watch. At the U.N. Palais des Nations and at NGO headquarters, specialists struggle to unite opposing governments in common goals.

Samuel Huntington's 1993 essay, "Clash of Civilizations," foresaw the long-term danger: war as Islamist extremists and others face off the West. Today, rogue states accumulate vast arsenals, several of them nuclear tipped. China and Russia meddle in a volatile mix.

Conflict in the unholy land is not about Jews, Arabs, Muslims or Christians, but rather perceived injustices, fundamentalist zealotry and self-focused politics. Benjamin Netanyahu no more represents Judaism than his criminal cohort in America does Christianity.

A strong, democratic Israel is essential to stabilize an explosive neighborhood. But Donald Trump's first term fired up ultra-Zionist parties and Jewish colonizers in the West Bank. It signaled to Palestinians they would slip further into a humiliating underclass status.

Well before Hamas attacked, young Palestinians reacted with violence in Jenin and other flashpoints. Israeli forces responded with live fire. That created martyrs and yet more incensed recruits, many in their teens, with a fatalistic approach to death.

Another Trump term with the sort of Congress that lionized Netanyahu on his recent trip to Washington risks war with Iran and its proxies across the Middle East. The long term that Huntington envisioned could be perilously short.

Yitzhak Brik, a retired Israeli general who was the army ombudsman, wrote in an essay this month: "The country really is galloping towards the edge of an abyss. If the war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah continues, Israel will collapse within no more than a year."

In a leaked letter, Ronan Bar, head of the Shin Bet security service, told Netanyahu, ministers and the attorney general that Jewish terror leaders in the West Bank "want to cause the system to lose control, causing indescribable damage to Israel." He said police inaction and Knesset members' support enables them to raid Palestinian homes with impunity.

Israel had no choice but to hit hard after Hamas's vicious October attack. But the Israeli human rights group B'Selem produced "Welcome to Hell," a 93-page documented report on overkill in Gaza and inhumane abuse of Palestinian prisoners.

Gideon Levy's blistering followup in Haaretz was headlined: "Israeli Society Has Truly Fallen to Violence, Cruelty and Apathy. Just Look at Us."

Young protesters in America are looking but often without considering wider context. Pro-Palestinians incite fury against Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris, who battle against a devious Netanyahu, a powerful Israel lobby and Jews who defend Israel unconditionally.

Their narrowly focused outrage may well tip the balance in swing states. Trump, who bears so much of the blame, would be back to make a volatile situation far worse.

Root causes date back 5,000 years, with unconfirmed reports of Moses leading his band out of Egyptian slavery across a miraculously parted Red Sea. Skip ahead to a more recent Exodus: Jews fleeing Europe to a homeland long fought over and settled by others.

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Anne Frank's diary and Schindler's list loom large in history. But a short hike across a barely perceptible open border through the Jewish cemetery from Veyrier into France traces the courage of ordinary people committed to doing the right thing.

One supporter of the Maison de Mémoire is Michel Lavollay, among those original "French doctors" who volunteered when disasters struck in far-flung places. He retired after years of fighting HIV-AIDS in key U.N. jobs and then working with Jonas Salk.

He now lives in the Bois Salève mansion near Annemasse, the escape route those young French women died to keep secret. From his third-floor apartment, you can see the graveyard's low wall.

The mansion, built in 1857 on the ruins of a castle, was once a convent. During World War I, it was a New Zealand Red Cross hospital. The French railway workers' union took it over as a holiday resort and summer camp for kids. Its staff looked the other way when it mattered.

Marianne Cohn, a German Jew whose family moved to France, joined the Resistance at 19. She snuck children in bunches through Bois Salève and over the wall. At first, Italian guards turned a blind eye. In 1944, the Gestapo caught on. Her 32 kids escaped, but she didn't.

Before she was dragged from the Hôtel Pax and clubbed to death, she wrote a poem, which ended: "You are five rough hands with rings; You have hob-nailed boots on your feet...; Today I have nothing to say; Tomorrow, I will betray."

Georges Loinger survived and died five years ago near Paris at 108. Tall, blond and athletic, he escaped Germany by hiding his devout Judaism. He saved more than 400 children with help from the sympathetic Annemasse mayor.

His ruse was to feign playtime. He would throw a ball 100 yards toward the wall. Kids ran after it and kept on going. After Germans cracked down, he disguised fleeing children in mourners' robes. They scaled the wall with a gravediggers' ladder.

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I came into the picture in 1943, the son of parents whose families escaped antisemitism to a Wisconsin commune. My paternal grandmother shepherded five kids away from Belarus via Switzerland in 1923, just before America began turning away most refugees. My mother's family was already at the commune, having fled pogroms in Ukraine.

We moved to Tucson, where I did bar mitzvah lite. We were Reform, relaxed about ritual. I still have that black leather prayerbook embossed with my name. Somewhere.

Jews come in all colors, mainly Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe and Sephardic from North Africa via Spain. They have no overall hierarchy, certainly no pope. Many are devoutly religious. Many are not, yet still value their spiritual identity and shared heritage. It all counts.

Trump says Jews who vote Democrat hate their religion and everything about Israel — yet more profound ignorance or pandering to Republican extremists. Christian Evangicals share a narrow idea of Zionism. Congressional debate veers into lunacy.

Marjorie Taylor Greene traced California wildfires to Jewish space lasers. Some Republicans echo ancient blood libel about ritual murders of children. One equates non-observant Jews with German concentration camp guards.

As a kid, I dropped lunch money into a little blue box to plant trees in Israel. As a reporter, I visited regularly and saw what they grew to be. Today, an olive grower, I know the gravity of bulldozers destroying gnarled old groves in response to thrown stones.

In 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon to stop Palestinians there from firing Katyusha rockets randomly across the border. As they pushed on towards Beirut, I watched David morph into Goliath.

I waited in a kibbutz as troops gathered for the assault. Reporters were barred from tagging along. But, working for the Associated Press, I had a strong case. AP went to newspapers and broadcasters of all extremes, bound by its charter and necessity to pursue objectivity.

I followed lead tanks rolling north in a car Hertz later regretted renting to me. Up the road, I saw aircraft bomb Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp where Palestinian guerrillas had shielded themselves among Palestinian families that suffered the consequences.

Censors killed my dispatches for "security reasons." I argued that terrorists knew they were being bombed without hearing it from AP. All appeals failed. The censors were intent on protecting Israel’s image abroad.

Up the road in the ancient city of Tyre, my next story made it to the wires. Part of it read: "Naval guns and airstrikes pounded to rubble much of the old downtown waterfront. On approach roads, rows of shops have fallen like dominos and heavy metal shutters are crumpled like tinfoil."

Those were early days. Dropped leaflets warned townsfolk to head for the beach. Some were happy to see Palestinians chased from their midst. An 11-year-old named Walid giggled as he told his story.

"My father is doctor. His clinic, finished," he said. "Boom, boom." Walid pointed to two blackened hulks nearby. "Our cars. Pontiac. BMW. Boom, boom."

It is different now. Just yesterday, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanded: "These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”

Airstrikes killed six U.N. Relief and Works Agency workers and at least 30 others at a Gaza school compound sheltering 12,000 displaced Palastinians. So far, 220 UNRWA staff have been killed in the war.

An army spokesman said aircraft “conducted a precise strike” on a Hamas command and control center embedded inside the refugee camp.

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Hamas strategists who sent murderous commandos into Israel expected to provoke massive retaliation. Workaday Palestinians are expendable. They wanted the outside world to react with revulsion against Israel. And that, to a large extent, has happened.

Terrorists are terrorists. Israel set out to be a civilized democracy that follows Judeo-Christian precepts, including the fifth commandment: Thou shalt not kill. All countries must respond to attack; the question is how.

It is far more expedient, and safer, to rain hellfire on civilian concentrations, even near hospitals and schools, if terrorists are believed to be in their midst. "Collateral damage" is the tradeoff.

Israelis turn out in the tens of thousands to protest Netanyahu's callous disregard for human lives. He ignores overwhelming sentiment for a ceasefire to bring home hostages. His attacks on Iran and provocative assassinations force all families to brace for retaliation.

Jews around the world who want peaceable coexistence with Palestine suffer from random acts of hatred. Hostility intensifies when simplified generalities blot out crucial nuance. Truth is a moving target.

International organizations concur with Hamas health officials that the death toll in Gaza is above 40,000. Some go further as the cumulative effect of indiscriminate assault collapses infrastructure in a grimly overcrowded and sealed-off enclave.

In July, the authoritative British medical journal, The Lancet, published findings of three specialists, including Martin McKee, an American who advises Israel's National Institute for Health Policy Research.

During recent conflicts, they wrote, "indirect deaths" that follow combat are from three to 15 times more than initial fatalities. They concluded:

"Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported (by mid-2024) it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza."

That would be 7.9 percent of Gaza's estimated 2022 population of 2,375,259.

Whatever the numbers, reality emerges from foreign medical staffs and Palestinians who work in fear for their lives among people desperately short of food and clean water. But reporters have only official Israeli accounts of a war they cannot witness themselves.

Unlike in 1982, the government cracks down hard on foreign media, restricting access in Gaza to rare brief trips with vigilant minders. During earlier conflict, AP's rooftop offices, frequented regularly by reporters and camera crews, were destroyed by rockets.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has tallied 111 Palestinians, two Israelis and three Lebanese killed in Gaza in the last 13 months. It lists five of the Palestinian deaths as murder, victims of direct gunfire by Israeli forces.

The West Bank is open but perilous. An Israeli soldier killed Shireen Abu Aklen of Al Jazeera in 2022 with what U.N. investigators say was no justification. Violence has since soared. Armed settlers eject families from homes and land. Young Palestinians fight back.

Furor arose in America and Turkey after Israeli gunfire killed Aysenur Eygi, 26, who had dual nationality and was clearly no serious threat. “She was gentle, brave, silly, supportive, and a ray of sunshine (who) lived a life of caring for those in need with action,” a family statement said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hardly free of authoritarian tendencies, denounced Israel's "Nazi" tactics.

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Back to those loaded words. "Israelis" are not "Nazis" anymore than "Palestinians" are "terrorists." Life is more complicated than that.

Jason Stanley, a Yale expert in totalitarianism, makes the point in a new book, "Erasing History." Demagogues' main priority is to blot out the past, from classrooms to mass media. They succeed only if they can reeducate people with their own version of truth.

Democracy is impossible unless voters are taught history and basic knowledge of the world as it is, Stanley says. Any skilled rabble rouser can take power, whether to create a Third Reich or to satisfy an insatiable ego. The keywords are simple: fear and loathing.

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Among those graves on a misty day against the dramatic Mount Selève backdrop, war was hard to imagine. I smiled at a sign saying passports were required and customs barred uninspected goods. Only small cement blocks marked "F" and "S" designated the border. An 18-wheeler truck could breeze though the untended checkpoint.

But those inscriptions. One tombstone names two family members who survived and died later but a few lines under a Star of David read, "All of their close ones were killed during the Holocaust, 1941-1944." There are others like it among 3.500 graves.

And now in Gaza, whole families die from shellbursts or bombs. Circumstances differ. But grief is grief.

In today's world, demagogues have ample tools to whip up hatred of a scapegoat "Other." Digital manipulation is now immeasuraby expanded with Artificial "Intelligence." It is time to remember those watchwords: Never Again.