On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we are meant to reflect on where hatred leads when it is ignored, excused or repackaged in more acceptable language.
It should be a moment of clarity.
Instead, it has increasingly become a moment when Jews are asked to prove their moral legitimacy by publicly denouncing the State of Israel.
There is a question that too few are willing to ask openly: Why is there a unique expectation that Jews must publicly denounce the Jewish state in order to be considered credible on issues of justice and human rights?
No such demand is imposed on anyone else. Public officials are not required to answer for every alleged abuse committed by their country of origin. Muslims are not expected to condemn every act carried out by Muslim-majority nations. Christians are not asked to disclaim the crimes historically committed in their name before being permitted to speak.
Yet when it comes to Jews, the expectation is different. Silence is treated as complicity. Nuance is treated as evasion. And even when Jews do speak critically, their words are often taken out of context and used to advance broader efforts that seek not reform, but the delegitimization of the Jewish state itself.
That is the bind. Speak, and your words are weaponized. Decline to perform condemnation on demand, and your integrity is questioned. This is not a universal standard. It is a double standard.
Let me be clear: Israel is not committing genocide. That accusation, repeated so casually in public discourse, is not only false; it is a profound distortion of a term that carries the gravest meaning in law and history.
What Israel faces is not theoretical. It is a matter of survival.
And for many Jews, that reality is not abstract but personal.
Reasonable people can disagree with the policies of any government, including Israel’s. But disagreement does not justify demands for the erasure of a state, and by extension, the people who live there. That is not accountability. It is something far more dangerous.
I will not participate in a ritual of compelled denunciation built on a premise I do not accept. I will not tailor my words to satisfy those who approach this issue with a double standard or whose demands are rooted less in a commitment to truth than in a desire to extract moral concessions.
There is a difference between good faith debate and bad faith demands.
Holocaust remembrance is not a forum for imposing litmus tests on Jews. It is a moment to remember what happens when language is distorted, when legal concepts are manipulated and when Jews are once again placed in a position of having to justify their own existence.
Am Yisrael Chai: The people of Israel live.
Those are my people. They face danger every day. And like any other people, they should not be held personally responsible for the actions of a government simply because of who they are.
That is a standard no one else is asked to meet. I will not accept it for Jews.
