In Hamas’ horrific killings, Israeli trauma over the Holocaust resurfaces

TEL AVIV, Israel — Women, children and older adults hiding in safe rooms gunned down mercilessly. Homes set ablaze with terrified residents still inside them. Children, some bound, forced into a room and slaughtered. Jews, helpless.

For many Israelis and Jews around the world, the horrors committed by Hamas terrorists during their stunning onslaught on southern Israeli communities is triggering painful memories of a calamity of a far greater scale: the Holocaust.

Long seen as a catastrophe so horrific nothing else should be compared to it, Israelis are now drawing direct parallels between the murder of 6 million Jews in Europe eight decades ago and their most recent tragedy, underscoring how traumatic the attack has been for a country that rose from the ashes of World War II and was created as a safe haven for Jews.

“I have been strict about not using the word ‘Shoah’ in any context other than the Holocaust,” political commentator Ben Caspit wrote in the daily Maariv, referring to the Holocaust by its Hebrew name. “When Jewish children hide in a protected room and their anguished parents pray that they won’t cry, so that the marauders won’t come in and set the house on fire, it’s a Shoah.”

Israel’s retaliation against Hamas in Gaza has also drawn comparisons to the Palestinians’ greatest national tragedy, the Nakba, when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced to flee following the 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation. Many Palestinians fear a repeat of that mass exodus after Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza.

Just a few years ago, comparisons to the Holocaust would have been promptly denounced as cheapening its memory and diminishing the horror of the Nazi crimes.

That has begun to erode in recent years — with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluding to the Nazis when talking about Iran and its nuclear program and protesters on rival sides of the political aisle calling each other “Nazis.” Still, such incidents remain rare and often draw criticism.

But the horrors of the Oct. 7 Hamas assault, which killed at least 1,300 Israelis, have tapped into Israel’s deepest fears and revived memories of the Jews’ greatest trauma.

“This is a massacre. This is a pogrom,” said Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv, leader of forces that cleared one of the besieged villages, referring to historic massacres of European Jews.

In the Holocaust, Nazis led a campaign of genocide, rounding up and murdering vast numbers of Europe’s Jews, while sending others on trains to death or labor camps.

Israel made protecting Jews from similar atrocities part of its raison d’etre. Many Israelis see their country as a refuge, a nation with a strong army that could protect Jews despite regional threats. Many Jews in the diaspora share that feeling, seeing Israel as a safe haven should Jews be persecuted again.