In his reflections on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the British novelist and essayist Howard Jacobson urges Jews not to internalize the messages of today’s anti-Semitism, which so often come in the form of anti-Zionism:

The modern anti-Semite is more subtle than his great-grandparents. He doesn’t smash our windows or our bones. He insinuates himself into consciences that are already troubled and works on spirits that are already half-broken. And we are too responsive to his serpent insinuations. When the history of Jew-hating in our time comes to be written, Jewish collusion in it will feature heavily. . . .

To the question, . . . “How do any of us, as Jews, fulfill the great task imposed on us [by the memory of the Holocaust]?,” here is my part-answer: stop apologizing and resist the sirens who would lure you onto the rocks of guilt and self-dislike, singing of Jewish materialism, Jewish legalism, Jewish exclusivism, Jewish supremacism, Jewish imperialism, Zionism. . . .

[A]lthough we intone the words “never again”—now as a prayer, now as a supplication, now as a commitment—we cannot rid ourselves of the fear that it, or something like it, might indeed happen again. . . . [W]e now accept that it was wild fantasy to hope that after the Holocaust we’d be left alone. . . . But we thought anti-Semitism itself might take a short break. . . . What no one could have expected was the speed with which they found a way round any such compunctions, not least by denying that anything had happened at all. Holocaust—what Holocaust? . . .

But it’s not those obsessive “deniers” who trouble Jacobson the most; rather it’s those who wish to relativize the Holocaust by means of invidious comparisons:

[There is a] moral seesaw on which Holocaust relativists love to frolic—the contestable atrocity that was the Holocaust now rising, now falling, but always ultimately outweighed by the incontestable outrage that is Zionism. . . .

“Never again” is the sacred promise we gather annually to reaffirm. It must be more than a mere wish. It binds us in the necessity to be strong-minded and alert. And that means alert, above all, to the words those with hatred in their hearts employ to exploit the guilt in ours.

The former Israeli chief justice Aharon Barak recently warned that the country could be headed toward civil war due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire the head of the Shin Bet, and the opposition thereto. To Amichai Attali, such comments are both “out of touch with reality” and irresponsible—as are those of Barak’s political opponents:

Yes, there is tension and stress, but there is also the unique Israeli sense of solidarity. Who exactly would fight in this so-called civil war? Try finding a single battalion or military unit willing to go out and kill their own brothers and sisters—you won’t. They don’t exist. About 7 percent of the population represents the extremes of the political spectrum, making the most noise. But if we don’t come to our senses, that number might grow.

And what about you, leader of [the leftwing party] The Democrats and former deputy IDF chief, Yair Golan? You wrote that the soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza are pawns in Netanyahu’s political survival game. Really? Is that what the tens of thousands of soldiers on the front lines need to hear? Or their mothers back home? Do you honestly believe Netanyahu would sacrifice hostages just to stay in power? Is that what the families of those hostages need right now?

Israeli democracy will not collapse if Netanyahu fires the head of the Shin Bet—so long as it’s done legally. Nor will it fall because demonstrators fill the streets to protest. They are not destroying democracy, nor are they terrorists working for Hamas.