Gaza: Accusation of genocide turns Jews from victims into perpetrators
“The Shoah has become moral currency – and is now being used against the Jews themselves. In this way, European remembrance is turning into an indictment of the victims,” writes Johannes C. Bockenheimer in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on November 17, 2025.
He criticizes the fact that the war in Gaza has led to a cynical reinterpretation of the term “genocide”. The Holocaust, in the context of which the term “genocide” was first used, was codified by systematic bureaucratic organization and the declared intention to completely annihilate the Jews, Bockenheimer states.
There can be no question of this in Israel’s war against Hamas, even if certain Israeli politicians have expressed a will to destroy the Palestinians. “What we have is a war with too many civilian casualties, with blocked aid corridors, probably also with war crimes. But a war is not genocide. And individual crimes are not systematic extermination with the aim of wiping out a people,” writes Bockenheimer.
At most, Hamas could be accused of having the will to commit genocide, as the preamble to its charter states: “Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam wipes it out, just as it has wiped out others before it.” However, the accusation that Hamas committed genocide on October 7, 2023 is rarely raised in Europe. “Why is that?” asks Bockenheimer. And gives the answer himself: “If the past centuries have proven anything, it is this: Anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in our societies. (…) Auschwitz has not changed that.” This is shown by the fact that “today, people from the center of society march side by side with Muslim anti-Semites at the “genocide” demonstrations.”
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