While walking between buildings at the Jewish National Fund (JNF) conference in Denver last December, I was part of a group accosted by a protester who angrily shouted at us to “Go back to Auschwitz!”As deplorable as it was to hear a person wish another human be sent to the Nazi gas chambers, there was something noteworthy about this protester: He told you exactly what he wants.
Too many other anti-Israel protesters want the same thing but obfuscate their messages behind false veneers to make them palatable to Western tastes.
Shouts of, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” are presented innocuously – who can object to freedom, especially when packaged in a cute rhyme? The Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are Israel’s borders. This shout really means that Israel, and by extension the Jewish people, should not exist.
It’s an indirect way of saying, “Go back to Auschwitz!”
Instead of legitimately calling for the rights of Palestinians, for a peace process, or for co-existence, many anti-Israel protesters scream, “Globalize the Intifada!” and “One solution: Intifada revolution!”
Apologists will say this is a call for peace. Nonsense.
Ask any Israeli who has lived through an Intifada and you’ll hear about bus bombings, rock- throwings, mass shootings, and pervasive terror attacks.
Calls for Intifada, even when they rhyme, are not calls for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation: They are calls for the Jews to go back to Auschwitz.
Ever wonder why there are no calls for a peace process between Israel and Iran? Ostensibly, peace between the two countries should be a cinch: they share no borders and have no competing claims over natural resources. Israel doesn’t want anything from Iran beyond being left alone.
Iran, however, hides behind the mask of Palestinian support, but what it really wants is to annihilate Israel because it stands in the way of Tehran’s regional dominance. Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, has threatened, “If the war expands we cannot say that Israel would lose, because nothing will remain of Israel to be described as loser or winner.”
Iran is fighting to end Israel’s existence, and one’s existence is not the type of issue that is up for negotiation.
Hamas doesn’t feel the need to whitewash its intentions. Senior Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad has stated, “We will repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel is annihilated.” Hamas states its unthinkably despicable objectives directly.
With Hamas, Iran, and their supporters working for Israel’s demise, US and UN directives to Jerusalem ring hollow. The Biden administration is signaling an underestimation of Israel’s challenges by talking to Israel as if Hamas was a minor inconvenience that should be brushed off because the war is hurting the US president’s polling.
The UN's obsession with Israel
The UN, true to form, continues with its anti-Israel obsessiveness and its calls for a unilateral ceasefire, without regard to Hamas’s actions.
The human suffering is dreadful, and Israel indeed has the obligation to minimize civilian casualties. All parties should be working towards a ceasefire that brings the return of the hostages and lasting peace, not just a chance for Hamas to regroup for the next battle.
Israel is fighting for its existence. This is crystal clear to every Israeli. It’s why the country is sacrificing its sons and daughters on the battlefield, why it turned itself upside down with a mass reserves call-up, why its fractured society united instantly on October 7, why it incessantly protests Western indulgence of Iran, and why it is ignoring extreme US and UN pressure to ease up on Hamas.
There are many issues on which Israel can compromise – but its existence is not one of them.
It is also why Israel feels it has no choice but to see through its war with Hamas – despite all the horror war brings – not to a pause or a standstill but to victory.
The Jewish people are not going back to Auschwitz.
The writer is the chief investment officer of Geshem Partners, an Israel-focused investment firm.