The Holocaust Do-Over

Israel Weekly War Diary, April 19, 2026

Israel Weekly War Diary April 19, 2026

The siren inaugurating this year’s Day of Remembrance for Holocaust Survivors and Heroes was launched by Holocaust survivor Miki Zamir and his granddaughter Major Noa Zamir, head of operations at Israel’s Home Front Command. Israel Today: “Consider for a moment what it must mean to those survivors who witnessed the near extermination of their people to today watch as their grandchildren lead the most powerful military in the Middle East in a reborn Jewish state.”

This siren was unlike the sirens we have been living under for two years or more. Instead of rushing inside bomb shelters and locking ourselves in tight, I opened my front door and stepped outside. Closing my eyes, I stood in silence breathing in the cool spring air, doing nothing but remembering.

I remembered all the stories my mother-in-law Shirely Ragen, an Auschwitz survivor, told me about her devout Jewish family in the Carpathian mountains in a place called Ungvár (Uzhhorord) which wasn’t a village, she always rather proudly pointed out, but a city. I remembered how she said that as she walked through the streets with her elderly grandmother, her parents her two sisters and two brothers towards the cattle cars, and how her neighbors – people she had known all her life – applauded or threw stones.

And now here we are, almost a century later, and Europe is once again applauding and throwing verbal stones and bombs and bullets at the Jews. Spaniards joke in their bars (in uploaded videos!) that if you put it in the oven and it starts screaming, it’s not pizza, but a Jew. They say this with wide, delighted smiles as if it’s a clever witticism. They have no fear of being judged. They know the people around them feel the same. They snicker and nudge each other.

I’ll tell you how I feel. I feel this is a Holocaust do-over, except this time the Jews were almost ready for them, except for that one terrible day when they caught us off-guard, still asleep in the liberal fantasy of a two-state solution. It is a do-over, except now the Jews have the most advanced weapons, the best pilots and planes in the world, superior technology, brave, clever, and fearless soldiers. We were fighting on seven fronts, and one by one, they were crushed, their leaders buried in rubble, suffocated in their underground bunkers. And we’ve just begun.

Everyone knows that if not for the Americans – who have sent their soldiers to keep an eye on what Israel is doing in Gaza (my officer granddaughter is translating for them), we would have long ago wiped out Hamas. And now Europe is screaming about the Hezbollah terrorists who took over Lebanon, terrified they too will be wiped out; terrified that the Jews will take more land and refuse to give it back to those planning to murder them; horrified that these new Jews don’t care what Europe thinks of them, and that it has absolutely no power at all over what the Jews are doing.

This is unacceptable to the Europeans, who badly want their old Jews back, the ones that were murdered with such ease because they had no weapons and no place to go and thus no choice but to do what they were told. On the other hand, they are thrilled that the Palestinians are getting their asses handed back to them so they can now pretend that the Jews are just as bad as the Europeans were during the Holocaust, so they needn’t feel ashamed of their disgusting family histories and their vile heritages.

Perhaps, and this is taking it rather far, they are almost relieved that they are being invaded by Muslims who will wipe their useless, immoral cultures clean off the map of mankind. If not, it’s hard to understand why they aren’t fighting back as exactly that scenario unfolds before them.

I have always felt that the great investment of Jewish millionaires in Holocaust museums was a total waste of money that should have gone to Jewish Day Schools to educate Jewish American children and prepare them for the realities of being a Jew in this world. It seems to me that a significant number of people passed through the doors of these worthy and creative institutions and rather than being appalled were inspired – at what was possible to do to the Jews, perhaps hoping for a similar opportunity in their own time.

And now here it is, but instead of another Holocaust, they are seeing dead terrorists, failing Islamic-Nazi regimes. So they focus on the children. The poor children! As if parents provoking a war are exempt from what happens to their children in that war. No one cried for the dead children in Berlin or Dusseldorf. But they cry for the children of the savages of Gaza, who are pretty much being educated to be savages themselves if they ever live to see adulthood, given their parents penchant for turning them into human shields, or planting rifles and grenade launchers in their cribs.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told Prime Minister Netanyahu that Israel must not annex the Biblical heartland of Israel, Judea and Samaria. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke in my name, and for all Israelis, when he shot back: “The days in which Germany tells Jews where they can and cannot live are over.”

Before the shockingly sudden ceasefire imposed by President Trump without Israeli input, Israel was bulldozing Lebanese border villages used to store Hezbollah weapons and launch attacks, especially anti-tank missiles. Hezbollah terrorists in Bint Jbeil southern Lebanon threw down their weapons and surrendered to Israeli forces. But the price has been high. Ten Israeli soldiers were wounded, three seriously, in fierce gun battles in Bint Jbeil on April 13. More have been killed in Hezbollah explosions since.

There is a memorable photo of Israeli soldiers spread out in front of the Hezbollah “memorial wall.” I’m sure IDF bulldozers will be busy there too one day soon. Hezbollah’s reign of terror, its weapons, its murderous terrorists – many dead, blinded or missing limbs— are dust.

Perhaps this is why 85% of Democratic Senators voted to deny Israel the ability to purchase American bulldozers, in a bill proposed by that fraud, the rich Socialist Bernie Sanders. No Jew should vote Democrat, ever.

According to journalist Amit Segal, support for Israel among Americans is at a 40 year low. Thus these words of President Trump couldn’t have come at a more crucial moment.

Tweeted yesterday by President Trump:

“Whether people like Israel or not, they have proven to be a GREAT ally of the United States of America. They are Courageous, Bold, Loyal and Smart and unlike others have shown their true colors in a moment of conflict and stress. Israel fights hard and knows how to win!”

As for the war, are we done, or still in the middle?

Israelis, and I’m sure the Iranian opposition, and Christian Lebanese would like to know. President Trump has issued statements that were very optimistic:

· The Straits of Hormuz are open permanently.

· Iran will hand over its enriched uranium.

· Iran will stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

· There is no connection between the deal with Iran and Israel’s war with Hezbollah.

And yet, ships attempting to cross through the Straits have been bombed and boarded by the IRGC.

Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref today:

· The Straits of Hormuz are in Iran’s hands.

· Either they give us what we deserve at the negotiating table, or we will take it on the battlefield.

· Trump’s statements are lies and not worth a response.

· Israel is “breaking the ceasefire in Lebanon”.

We aren’t violating any ceasefire agreement. There is no agreement at all between Israel and Hezbollah (which continues to blow up houses and kill our reservists).

In contrast, Trump’s social media account has been broadcasting videos in which show the call for help from the Iranians who protested against the regime on a background Israeli flags, American flags, and the Lion and Sun flags, with a voice-over which says: “Sometimes in history there is a magical moment, someone appears on the scene and everything changes.” [Trump’s voice:] “I am with you, I will fight for you and I will win for you. You are watching history – so buckle up.”

I and many others, are buckled up. In the meantime, we don’t really know how long this shaky ceasefire is going to last. Israel is forcing all its schools to open. Thousands of Israelis visited the national parks on Shabbat after a very long time of being cooped up inside. I myself am going to Jerusalem to see my family after a long lapse in which trains weren’t running and missiles were sending my grandkids and their kids to shelters.

And in this week’s Haphtorah reading, God tells His people: (Isaiah 66: 12) “For thus sayeth the Lord: See me make peace flow to her [Jerusalem] like a river.”

Have faith.