A Russian-born lawyer and committed Zionist, Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) is best known for coining the word genocide in 1933, and for his role in laying the legal groundwork for the Nuremberg trials. He also wrote Hebrew verse, much of which has been lost. But James Loeffler and Leora Bilsky recently discovered a poem (translated here) he published in an Israeli newspaper in 1957. They write:

In a prefatory note to the poem, . . . Lemkin said that “the world had begun to forget the great crime against the Jews.” [The] poem takes the form of a classic Hebrew lamentation over the tragic losses suffered by the Jewish people, whose names had been blotted out by their persecutors. In language echoing the Israelite prophets, medieval Ashkenazi liturgical elegies, and the modern Hebrew poet Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik, Lemkin evokes the classic imagery of the ruined Jewish cityscape. In his verse, dogs and pigs defile half-buried Jewish bones as a terrible silence reigns in the empty streets. Like Bialik’s Kishinev in pre-World War I Russia and Isaiah’s Jerusalem millennia before, the ransacked, desolate city symbolizes the vanquished Jewish people, who, to paraphrase Isaiah, live on only in the form of “a sign and a remembrance.”

Lemkin’s anguished text also explains why the world had already begun to forget the Holocaust. Genocide represents more than a large-scale physical assault on human bodies, he suggests; it is also an attack on the very existence of minority cultures. In a genocide, books are burned and memories are extinguished. Lemkin describes a silent piano and a muted violin, whose owners have been disappeared and whose songs will never be heard again. “In the school, where you once taught,” he wrote, “Your gifted student will be punished,/ For praising your name.”

Lemkin’s lost poem reminds us of something valuable. When we remember the Holocaust only as a universal parable of racial hatred and religious stigmatization, we miss its full import as an attack against Jews as Jews. If we likewise condition the memory of the Holocaust on its relevance to contemporary political issues, we risk distorting the crime itself and dishonoring its Jewish victims once more.

If there’s one lesson to be learned from the history of the Israel-Arab conflict, it’s never to be confident that an end is in sight. Ehud Yaari nevertheless—and with all due caution—points to some noteworthy developments:

The absolute primacy of “armed struggle” in Palestinian discourse has discouraged any serious attempt to discuss or plan for a future Palestinian state. Palestinian political literature is devoid of any substantial debate over what kind of a state they aspire to create. What would be its economic, foreign, and social policies?

One significant exception was a seminar held by Hamas in Gaza—under the auspices of the late Yahya Sinwar—prior to October 7, 2023. The main focus of what was described as a brainstorming session was the question of how to deal with the Jews in the land to be liberated. A broad consensus between the participants was reached that most Israeli Jews should be eradicated or expelled while those contributing to Israel’s success in high tech and other critical domains would be forced to serve the new Palestinian authorities.

Yet, the ongoing aftershocks from the ongoing war in Gaza are posing questions among Palestinians concerning the viability of armed struggle. So far this trend is reflected mainly in stormy exchanges on social-media platforms and internal controversies within Hamas. There is mounting criticism leveled at the late Mohammad Deif and Yahya Sinwar for embarking upon an uncoordinated offensive that is resulting in a “Second Nakba”—a repeat of the defeat and mass displacement caused by launching the war in 1948.

To be sure, “armed struggle” is still being preached daily to the Palestinian communities by Iran and Iranian proxies, and at least half the Palestinian public—according to various polls—believe it remains indispensable. But doubts are being heard. We may be reaching a point where the Palestinians will feel compelled to make a choice between the road which led to past failures and an attempt to chart a new route. It will certainly require time and is bound to cause fractures and divisions, perhaps even a violent split, among the Palestinians.