Jews had to be eliminated in order to save Germany and Europe. The Holocaust was a simple case of self-defense.
Hitler’s assumptions may have been evil, but his logic was reasonable: the ideology of the Jews represented an existential threat to the concept that Might must be allowed to Make Right. Jews spread, like a disease, an enfeebling ideology that defends the weak and insists that each person has value because they are equally ensouled by G-d.
Ideas are very powerful (as the actions of any totalitarian regime against free speech demonstrates) – so even though the Jews never posed any kind of physical or military threat to anyone else, the threat Judaism poses to those who hold incompatible beliefs was and is real.
Hitler’s argument was that ideologies are important and worth defending. That is not necessarily crazy, or even wrong: Americans have gone to war for freedom and against tyranny in the past. And countless people have risked their own lives in order to fight for a better future for our loved ones. Aren’t patriots and parents fighting with noble goals in mind?
Self-defense is not just about our physical bodies, after all. The Second Amendment is all about freedom of the mind, not just freedom of the body.
If this is the case, is there an argument to be made that someone who endangers your core raison d’etre, is trying to commit murder, and thus can be killed for it?
And what is our reason for existence? For many of us, it is for our loved ones: I would kill to defend my family from harm. I am religiously enjoined to die rather than engage in idolatry or adultery; the corollary (I think) being that I must be willing to kill in order to prevent either being forced upon me.
Where does this lead us?
The world is now at the point where the gloves are off. Europe is engaged in a social civil war. The United States is not far behind. The ideologies of the Woke Left and the Woke Right will not tolerate the continued existence of their enemies. Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens join the Columbia protesters in agreeing that Jews, to cite merely the canary in the coal mine, must no longer exist, whether in Manhattan or Israel itself.
The logic is unavoidable. Unless we can change how people think, there will be bloodshed.
From the Jewish perspective, while we recognize the power of force and coercion, we know it is all – and almost always – really a war of ideas, not fists or bullets. To paraphrase Sun-Tzu: the goal is not to destroy your enemy, but to destroy their ideology. The goal is not to kill our enemies, but to enlighten them.
And who are our enemies? Those who seek to destroy us. Those whose ideologies are simply incompatible with the existence of Jews and our free practice of our religion.
Judaism seeks to maximize our relationship with G-d and our investment in the betterment of mankind through the creative powers G-d has granted us. The world has now reached a point where these twinned goals are considered unacceptable. We must fight – and win – this war.