Never again? No, again.

For 78 years the Jewish community, joined by many around the world, has chanted, “Never again!” We would take action to avert another Jewish Holocaust. Six million dead at the hands of Nazis was unfathomable, the entire world agreed. Never, ever again.

Few words have ever rung so hollow.

Dwight Widaman, Editor

Yes, in the twenty-first century – again.

My heart is broken over the weekend’s slaughter of Jews. Saturday saw the greatest single-day loss of Jewish civilian life since the furnaces burnt nonstop in the final days of the Holocaust.

The videos are gruesome. Jewish women and young girls were kidnapped, beaten, and raped, their blood dripping from their mouths and between their legs as they were paraded around Gaza’s streets to the catcalls of its Palestinian residents. A five-year-old Jewish boy now a hostage, is taunted and prodded with sticks by Palestinian children and his terrorist captors. He cries in Hebrew for his mother, “Ima! Ima! Ima!”

Another Gaza video shows a HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR! Yes, an elderly wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor, paraded along a Gaza street like a trophy.

Do these images seem familiar?

Israel is a rather small country. There are just 7.1 million Jews. In terms of numbers, the loss of life this weekend is equivalent to 30,000 Americans dying in one day and 125,000 being injured. And the bodies are still being discovered.

These people were not soldiers. In truth, only a few soldiers are among the dead. These were families and teens, college students and nursing home residents peacefully enjoying a Saturday morning–their sabbath day of rest. Some were discovered on their neighborhood streets, beheaded in the style of ISIS. At a music festival celebrating peace and love, young people were machine-gunned as they fled. More than 260 died there.

Terrorists set fire to the house and burned a family alive when they were unable to break into the safe room to reach them.  Babies were snatched from their mothers’ arms and shot in the head. Entire families were killed in their vehicles while fleeing. The elderly were killed where they sat in their wheelchairs.

Are these images too horrifying to contemplate? Does it make you feel uneasy? We’ve seen them before.

We vowed as a world, never again.

Protests against Israel have already begun, even before the majority of the murder victims have been buried. Palestinians are waving swastikas at rallies in New York and Miami today.  Hypocritical demands for Israel to show “restraint” echo on social media while Jewish mothers still search for their children.

What you’re seeing now in Israel is an entire nation filled with righteous anger. Israel simply wishes to exist.

Israel will not hold back its retaliation. It is a response that neither you nor I nor any world leader or political commentator, have the right to judge.

This level of premeditated massacre of Jews has not been seen since the Nazi regime. Do you understand that?

I will not pass judgment on Israel’s response in Gaza.

Hamas uses its own civilians as human shields. Israel utilizes targeted strikes against military targets, even warning civilians to evacuate though some may be inadvertently killed. Unprovoked, Hamas purposefully killed and injured thousands of Israeli civilians.

As one of the few Americans who has visited the Gaza border (and my wife Anita has been INSIDE a Hamas tunnel during an investigative trip as recently as last December), I can tell you that Gaza is a terrorist state run by animals who would just as easily break into a Jewish home and murder a child in a crib as they would slit the throat of an animal for butcher.

This is what Israel is dealing with.

Images will be difficult to watch in the next days and weeks. The media will attack Israel and its response. Some may incorrectly equate Israel’s response with Hamas’s carnage. Some will repeat Hamas propaganda about the death toll in Gaza.  But, of course, the figures come from Hamas, a terrorist organization that is attempting to sway global opinion after miscalculating the world’s outrage over their acts this weekend.

Israel has a right to respond.

Those who seek peace may be forced to endure war as the Allies did during World War II.

Never again?

No, again. But this time the Jewish people will respond on their own behalf.

– Dwight Widaman is an award-winning journalist and editor of metrovoicenews.com.  With his wife Anita, they founded VisionIsrael.org which works to eliminate antisemitism on American college campuses and introduce individuals to the land of Israel.