6 No. 74 JUSTICE genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by Hamas, a genocidal terror organization which repeatedly stated its intent to commit a million October 7s − because the State of Israel exists. Even as the State of Israel is defending itself from this openly declared genocidal intent, it is accused by none other than South Africa, having itself committed genocide, a term coined by Raphael Lemkin whose entire family was annihilated in Auschwitz, and crimes against humanity, a legal concept pioneered by Hersch Lauterpacht. Utilization of the Genocide Convention in the International Court of Justice against Israel, one of the first signatories of the convention, is backed by what I call the human rights industry. It is not really human rights per se, because it is no longer human rights if Amnesty International openly redefines genocide by removing the need for intent from the crime of genocide. In this sequence, in a post-2023 massacre, October 7 was actually an attack of barbarism on civilization. I often refer to what is occurring today as the eight war front, as we describe Israel fighting on seven fronts. The eighth war front refers to the responses to the October 7 massacre, the atrocities, the war crimes, the crimes against humanity. What I mean by the “responses” includes the responses of silence from international organizations. I spoke at the UN one month after October 7 and Israel had barely begun to understand what had to be done to respond. Not one women's organization or children's organization unequivocally condemned the atrocities perpetrated on that day. So, “we believe you, unless you're a Jew,” represented the going statement one day after October 7, one month after October 7, and eighteen months after October 7. These were responses of silence. Then there were responses of denial of the Holocaust. I certainly experienced this growing up in Canada. Systematic Holocaust denial or curriculum Holocaust denial with Ernst Zündel and James Keegstra, who tried to teach Holocaust denial, but were prevented from doing so in Canada in the 1980s, when I was in high school. Denial of October 7 began on October 7, even as its barbaric perpetrators streamed the atrocities, the war crimes, and the crimes against humanity, because we are also meeting in a time shaped by social media — something we cannot ignore. I will delve into that below, through the Interparliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism and the work we did there. But the understanding that denial began on that day was most disturbing, certainly for me. Perhaps this sounded the alarms of urgency, though I understood precisely that the tsunami of antisemitism might erupt. Denial was not something I could have fathomed to the extent that it appeared. The next type of responses were those of justification: Professors who were exhilarated by the atrocities. Judith Butler, whose textbooks I studied in law school, explaining that rape is armed resistance. Justification across spaces and places on the streets of New York City, of Toronto, of Sydney, and so on, justifying the atrocities perpetrated by a designated, prescribed terror organization. Not condemning that terror organization or its supporters but instead condemning the Jew among the nations that like any other country had to protect its civilians and borders. And finally, the attack on Jews and Zionists, private individuals on campus, online, at work, and on streets around the world. Aleksandra Gliszczyńska–Grabias quoted the most recent Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report, and noted that in this tsunami of antisemitism there is an increase of several hundred percent in this new strain of antisemitism − anti-Zionism − that enabled all of the old strains to be legitimized, normalized, and mainstreamed so that there is no longer any differentiation. I went on a speaking tour before I was in the current role to which I was appointed three weeks before October 7, to talk about antisemitism and combating antisemitism with human rights across law schools in North America − Colombia, NYU, Rutgers, Yale, and others. At the entrance to NYU Law School, I was greeted by a sign written in big pink chalk letters, “Zionists not welcome,” where the term Zionists is just coding for “Jew.” Well, you no longer need to code it so that what you see in an elementary school in Australia or in other places around the world is “kill the Jews.” These expressions have become legitimate and mainstreamed and justify hate that not only targets Jews, but also targets anybody who stands up to this hate and believes in the right of the State of Israel to exist. After that sort of analysis, I think we must be most cognizant of the context of the Yom HaShoah sort of moment in which we meet. For many years, we focused on remembering what happened in the Holocaust. But that is not enough. Remembering what happened without understanding the mechanism that enabled it to happen, the “how it happened” is actually the failure to uphold the pledge of “Never Again.” I will say it again: “Never Again” is a prospective commitment. “Never Again” in the future. We cannot prevent the past. We are commanded to remember the past. The word zachor is the word that appears most often in the Old
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