Mahad Hussein Sallam, Blogs Mediapart, 4/8/2025
Translated by Tlaxcala
A memory under
influence: thinking about justice through the prism of remembrance
‘Never again.’ This
injunction, born out of the Holocaust, has become a universal moral imperative.
Engraved in museums and
repeated in speeches, it claims to prevent the worst from happening again. But
what is this promise worth if it only protects some and justifies the suffering
of others?
Memory, far from being a sanctuary, is a battlefield. It enlightens or obscures. It can warn or conceal. When it becomes instrumentalised, it ceases to be a duty and becomes a lever of domination.
Philosemitism as a
moral talisman: between the duty to remember and political blindness
Ivan Segré wrote:
"Philosemitism is the best way to stop being anti-Semitic while continuing
to dominate. " State philosemitism transforms the memory of the Holocaust
into a moral absolute. Any criticism of Israel becomes suspect. The confusion
between Judaism, Zionism and the state becomes a weapon of domination.
In Gaza, more than 60,000 people have been killed, children are malnourished, journalists have been killed and hospitals destroyed. And there is a frightening media silence. Human Rights Watch, the UN and MSF are sounding the alarm: use of starvation, bombing of civilian infrastructure, war crimes. Yet to denounce these facts is to risk being accused of anti-Semitism.
A hierarchical memory: Gaza, Rwanda, Yemen, Congo and Namibia
Rwanda, 1994: 800,000 Tutsis massacred. Warnings ignored. Passive complicity of Western powers. In France, archives reveal close ties with the perpetrators of genocide. This genocide is still absent from school textbooks.
Mary Zins, 2018
Today, according to
international organisations, millions of children are still threatened by
famine and multiple epidemics.
Leopold II's Congo: more than 10 million dead for rubber. Hands cut off,
villages burned down. Silence again, a century later. In 2020, King Philippe
expressed ‘regret’, but without an official apology or reparations.
Herero fleeing German troops in the Omaheke Desert (1907). Ulstein Bild / Roger-Viollet
Herero and Nama: the
first genocide of the 20th century
In Namibia, between 1904
and 1908, the Germans exterminated 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama. The
official order of General von Trotha, October 1904: ‘Every Herero found within
the German border, with or without weapons, with or without cattle, will be
shot.’ Concentration camps, rape, medical experiments. Skulls were sent to
Berlin for racial studies. The 2021 recognition remains symbolic. No
reparations, no shared memory, no special attention as long as it happens on
another continent.
A Namibian historian sums it up: ‘The Herero genocide is the missing link between 19th-century imperialism and Nazism.’ But Europe has learned nothing. The crime has been erased from our shared history.
The geopolitics of
memory: who benefits from remembering?
Some pain is sanctified,
other pain is rejected.
Israel benefits from a
unique historical capital linked to the Holocaust and the post-colonial order.
This capital also serves as a geopolitical shield. Memory becomes a tool for
forgetting. Auschwitz is taught, Sabra and Shatila are silenced. Philosemitism
is not love for Jews: it is the strategic use of their history.
A European diplomat
admits: ‘Recognising Gaza as a human tragedy would be to delegitimise our
alliance with Israel. It is politically unthinkable.’
Historical memory is never
neutral. It is hierarchical, instrumentalised and calibrated according to
geopolitical interests. In the West, some suffering is sanctified, while other
suffering is silenced or relegated.
Israel today benefits from
unparalleled historical capital. This is explained, of course, by the horror of
the Holocaust, but also by the strategic context in which this memory was
recognised: that of a post-imperial world in which Western powers were redrawing
the contours of their influence. The memory of the Jewish extermination has
become, alongside ethical recognition, a moral guarantee for a new architecture
of alliances in the Middle East.
This brutal equation
highlights an uncomfortable truth: the memory of some peoples is protected
because it serves certain interests. The memory of others is erased because it
disturbs them.
We commemorate Auschwitz, but not Sabra and Shatila. We criminalise the denial of Nazi crimes, but we relativise the deaths in Rafah. Memory becomes a tool of diplomacy, a weapon of moral selection. Oil, gas, raw materials, geopolitics and strategic interests: these are, unfortunately, the real headlines under which many human tragedies are written, whether we recognise them or deny them.
Philosemitism versus
Judaism?
The sacred use of memory
prevents any criticism. Annette Wieviorka: "We have frozen Jewish
suffering in a sacralisation. " Philosemitism is becoming a trap.
Jewish thinkers such as
Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein and Marc Ellis denounce the confusion between
Judaism and colonialism. For them, it is fidelity to Jewish ethics that
dictates opposition to oppression, even when it is perpetrated by a state
claiming to be Jewish.
What if this apparent
excess of love becomes another form of betrayal? This is what Israeli
journalist Gideon Levy denounces: ‘Israel is not protecting the moral heritage
of Judaism, it is betraying it.’
The instrumentalisation of the Holocaust is now being used to sanctify a state that bombs, colonises and discriminates. This sanctification creates an implicit hierarchy of suffering.
The result is that any
criticism of Israel becomes suspect. Memory becomes an ideological shield. As
Dominique Vidal so aptly puts it: "The risk is that other genocides become
second-rate tragedies. ‘
Modern philosemitism,
excessive admiration and political untouchability no longer protect Jews; they
lock them into a role as sacred icons in the service of power.
Abel Herzberg put it
succinctly: ’There are two kinds of anti-Semites: those who hate us and those
who love us too much."
Gideon Levy also denounces
a Jewish state that has become racial, unequal and exclusive. He is not alone.
Other Jewish thinkers, Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein and Avraham Burg, are
sounding the same alarm: confusing Judaism and Zionism is harmful to everyone.
Marc Ellis concludes: ‘The only way to honour Jewish memory is to stand with
the oppressed, not the oppressors.’
A universal memory or
nothing
Memory must not pick and
choose among the dead. It must not legitimise the forgetting of the living. It
must disarm narratives, embrace all pain, and teach all tragedies.
This text is a call to
action. Teach about the Rwandan genocide, colonial massacres, the famine in
Gaza, the plight of Yemen, with the same solemnity as the Holocaust. Not to
relativise, but to universalise.
Let ‘never again’ not be a
mere slogan emptied of meaning, but a real demand. For selective memory is
always a prelude to further violence. Universalism begins when memory ceases to
be a weapon. A memory that sorts the dead always ends up justifying the living
who kill.
