Thursday marks Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Unfortunately, the world has failed to grasp the rallying cry of “never again” and take real action. Although we must be careful when it comes to making Holocaust comparisons, it is clear that we have not adequately learned the lesson of history’s darkest hour.
In Ukraine, the Russians are acting like Nazis in their so-called “de-Nazification” campaign. They are committing genocide against Ukrainian civilians. From Bucha to Mariupol to Borodyanka, Russian troops have deliberately massacred civilians, including children. They have destroyed apartments and other civilian buildings. They have raped women and girls. This is in the same country where more than seven decades ago, Jews were shot and killed by Nazis and their accomplices at Babyn Yar and elsewhere.
The United States and its allies have not done enough to stop these injustices. Washington should help to transfer MiG fighter jets to Ukraine. The Biden administration and its allies should enact maximum sanctions against Russia, including on its energy sector. In addition, the State Department should add Russia to the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
It’s not just Ukraine.
Through sanctions relief and other means, the U.S. and the West more broadly have tried to appease the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear weapons program. This, even though Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime openly and repeatedly tells us that it wants to finish Hitler’s work. The Jewish state, which was founded after the Holocaust, faces an increasingly real prospect of annihilation. As Iran prevaricates in nuclear negotiations, it’s time for the Biden administration to resume the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign. That campaign nearly brought Tehran to its knees. If Biden finds the courage to restore the pressure, Iran will be forced to choose between compromise and the regime’s possible implosion.
Nor is it just Iran and Ukraine, however.
We’ve seen recent genocides from Burma to Xinjiang to Tigray. Maximum sanctions against the actors behind those genocides are yet to be enacted.
Again, we must be careful in universalizing the Holocaust. But it’s clear that the world has not taken “never again” seriously.
Jackson Richman is a journalist in Washington, D.C. Follow him @jacksonrichman.
