Refusing to learn from history: The world looks away as terror is legitimized, excused - opinion

Today’s ideological manipulation echoes the rhetoric that paved the way for the greatest atrocity of the past.

Eighty years ago, the world swore it would never again allow barbarity to present itself with an air of legitimacy. The Holocaust – the systematic extermination of millions of Jews and other minorities during World War II – highlighted the catastrophic consequences of tolerating hatred and persecution.

Historical records show that many were aware of the growing antisemitism and persecution of minorities in Germany and occupied countries but remained inert or minimized the facts, indirectly allowing the escalation.

Today – from universities to newsrooms, from parliaments to international organizations – we witness a disturbing moral déjà vu.

The Holocaust did not begin in the extermination camps. It began earlier: in classrooms, in newspapers, and in coffee shop conversations, when hatred disguised as a cause gained intellectual prestige.

Professors relativized, journalists “contextualized,” politicians calculated, and institutions – guardians of ethics and reason – embraced the cause of the criminals as if it were legitimate.

The same script repeats itself, with the usual protagonists acting in a new chapter of history.

With each massacre perpetrated by terrorist groups, part of the press rushes to “explain” the inexplicable, transforming victims into culprits and murderers into militants.

Prestigious academics organize debates and publications that present terror as legitimate resistance, while manifestos and articles repeat slogans that relativize the murder of civilians.

Politicians from various spectrums speak of “historical context” or “inequalities” as justification for the violence.

This stance sends a dangerous message: it legitimizes hatred, normalizes violence, and weakens the concept of international justice, making it clear that victims can be forgotten in the name of a convenient narrative.

Those who today downplay terrorism are direct heirs to the complacency that, in 1930s Europe, legitimized antisemitism with academic and journalistic language. The words have changed, but the mechanism is the same.

The discourse of the “just cause” serves as a veil for hatred, and emotional manipulation replaces reason. Again, we pretend not to see, and we pretend in the name of “complexity,” as if evil needed more nuances to be recognized.

What is most disturbing is that this blindness does not stem from ignorance but from moral expedience.

It is easier to defend a popular villain than to uphold the unpopularity of the truth. It is more profitable, politically and academically, to adhere to the narrative of the moment than to confront historical distortion.

Thus, lying becomes virtue, silence becomes prudence, and cowardice takes on the name of neutrality.

Each act of current complacency reinforces patterns of injustice and creates precedents that erode the values ​​of an entire society, compromising not only the present but the memory and ethics of future generations.

However, there is a fundamental difference between those who erred in the past and those who err now: we know what came after.

We have photos, testimonies, museums, films, and archives – and yet we repeat the same moral error, fully aware of the abyss it heralds.

Every omission, every relativization, every silent applause for the terrorists brings us closer to the normalization of evil, making the repetition of the tragedy not only possible but predictable.

The State of Israel emerged as a historic response to the Holocaust, offering a safe haven to Jews and preserving the memory of a tragedy that must never be repeated.

It is not history that has failed to teach us. It is we who refuse to learn.