“Never Again” Post October 7th

For Israeli millennials like myself, “Never Again” was part of the verbal fabric of our childhood. ‘Never again’ was never a statement of hope or just a heartfelt wish. In our minds, it was a concrete fact.

The horrifying stories of many of our grandparents who survived, yet bore witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust, were always the background narrative, but we were surrounded by the abundance of blooming Israel to balance out these stories. We were raised in a young promising country that was opening up to the world. A soon to become a powerhouse of innovation on the world stage. This reality was the ‘never again’ phoenix rising from the ashes chapter in Jewish history.

The sentiment of our parents was basically ‘hey, look at us now! We have Israel, a Jewish state and the Nazis are gone and what happened to your grandparents will never happen to you’.

The establishment of Israel, the war of Independence, the 6 day war and other successful military campaigns instilled a sense of security and at no point I can think of, did the idea of an existential crisis even raise its ugly head for a second for our generation.

We knew there would be ‘moments’, but we could write it off in our minds as ‘bumps in the road of a young country. We were teens and young adults during the Iraq war and the Intifada and we’ve become accustomed to defense operations every so often after rounds of rockets that come with menacing sirens, but still, the threat being anything close to existential was nowhere on the radar in our minds

‘Never again’ has always been Israel’s raison d’etre, a fact repeated as a reminder of the barbaric potential outcomes of antisemitism and how Israel’s very existence was a reminder that we will overcome absolutely anything because, after all, the Holocaust couldn’t happen again.

We went on school trips to Yad Vashem and to Auschwitz, with a constant chorus singing in our psyches of ‘never again’ as the tour bus brought us home to our blessed existence.

The possibility of another genocide was not even entertained as a worst case scenario, it was a hypothetical scenario as long as Israel exists. We were living our best lives, born in the holyland in a rapidly developing country, Nobel prizes coming home left, right and center, a Mediterranean lifestyle and we were not afraid, we had a super-resilient army in case anyone tried to pick a fight.

That said, we were not strangers to danger and to life under constant threat.  As someone who grew up in Jerusalem in the late 90s and early 2000s, I can still vividly remember the years of the second Intifada which were also my high school years, yet  kids are resilient and I still believed ‘never again’ was a fact. So did my parents.

Buses were exploding weekly and my parents didn’t let me take the bus because it was simply too dangerous.

Other safety precautions were also part of my daily routine. If I had to take the bus, I had to wait a few feet behind the bus stop, just in case a terrorist tried to run over the people waiting at the stop.

If I went with friends to a restaurant, we automatically sat as far from the windows as possible.

If you’re reading this and were not raised in Israel, you would be right to ask yourself ‘How can he describe such events and still didn’t think there was an existential threat to the state of Israel?’  And you’d be right to ask that question, when I look back I honestly don’t know how we felt so confident that ‘never again’ was a fact. Israel as a state, in my mind, was invincible and no one would have been able to convince me otherwise.

After high school, I served in the army believing this, I travelled to South America believing this, I graduated as a lawyer believing this,  I got married believing this, I was blessed with a son believing this, I became a minister of the Bennet-Lapid government believing this and was blessed with a daughter still believing this… until October 7th.

Rewinding back a couple of weeks before October 7th,  my mom and I were sitting in my kitchen chatting the way we do about everything and anything and I vividly remember her saying ‘Idan, your generation never experienced the feeling that our country might not exist tomorrow like we felt during the Yom Kippur war. It was the most dreadful feeling you can imagine’.

Unfortunately, I, like many other of my fellow millennial Israelis can now post the massacre of October 7th resonate those inadvertently poignant feelings my Mom shared with me only weeks earlier.

I am haunted by the memories of the terrified faces of my friends and my neighbours  begging me to let them know if, as a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, I may have some insider information to help them decide if they should run for their lives and save their children’s lives, just like some informed (& lucky) Jews managed to do during the Holocaust,  or if they should stay and hold on to the hope that ‘never again’ was still a notion that they could cling onto for now.

Each time I was asked, I was stoic in reassuring them that our country’s existence is not in danger. Each time I said it, the feeling that the bubble our generation has had the privilege of living in had burst, I immediately understood that we, as a generation,  raising families will have to recreate our identity and somehow give our children the sense of security we were given by our parents and our parents were given by their parents when the state of Israel was declared in 1948. This process is ongoing, like any deep cut, it takes time to heal and grow new skin.

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, we must make a paradigm shift in thinking regarding what ‘ Never Again” means to Israelis and Jews of all generations now.

‘Never Again’ is still the spirit we must live by, but ‘never again’  is no longer a guarantee. ‘Never again’ is deleted as a historical achievement we can check off our to-do list. “Never Again” is a mission. ‘Never again’ a living commitment we must renew constantly through generation to generation.

Let this Holocaust Memorial Day be a reminder to us all that our safety, our resilience and our future depend on us being stronger together, in Israel and in the Diaspora.

We have a huge fight against anti semitism on our hands to ensure that future generations will be able to live in a world where ‘never again’ really becomes a fact.