While the Nazis did not restrict their machinery of mass-slaughter to the murder of Jews, the often-cited statistic that there were five-million “others” killed alongside six-million Jews has no basis in historical fact. This myth, which has circulated since the 1970s, has refused to die, despite the efforts of numerous historians. Ron Kampeas writes:

The problem, according to Yehuda Bauer, [the dean of Israeli historians of the Shoah], who has debunked the number repeatedly in his writings over the decades, is not that non-Jews were not victims; they were. It is that [this] arbitrarily chosen tally of non-Jewish victims diminishes the centrality to the Nazi ideology of systematically wiping any trace of the Jewish people from the planet.

In fact, in Bauer’s opinion, the term “genocide” could accurately be applied to [Polish victims of] the Nazis. But the mass murder of the Poles, Roma, and others should not come under the rubric “Holocaust.” . . . “All Jews of the world had to be annihilated,” Bauer said. “That was the intent. There was never an idea in Nazi minds to murder all Russians.”

The number five million adheres to no known understanding of the number of non-Jews killed by the Nazis. While as many as 35 million people were killed overall because of Nazi aggression, the number of non-Jews who died in the concentration camps is no more than half a million. Using the eleven-million figure often leads to muddled history. [An article in the] Huffington Post-UK, for instance, lists as a separate class “twins,” as if Josef Mengele, the murderous doctor at Auschwitz, sought out twins of any heritage for his experiments. In fact, they were chosen only from among the Jews and Roma arriving at the camp.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.