Every month of May each year marks the commemoration of the end of World War II. This was a defining conflict of the 20th century that reshaped the modern world through widespread destruction, ideological warfare, and the collapse of entire nations.
It is remembered not only for its military scale but for the immense human cost, including the Holocaust and the deaths of tens of millions of civilians and soldiers worldwide, estimated at around 70 to 85 million lives.
The war’s end in 1945 marked a turning point in history, leaving behind a world deeply scarred and a lasting commitment to the idea that such devastation must never be repeated. The phrase “Never Again” emerged not as a slogan, but as a warning to humanity.
Eighty-one years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the world still rightly remembers one of history’s greatest crimes: the industrialised extermination of Europe’s Jews. The Holocaust was not merely a tragedy; it was a catastrophic moral collapse of civilisation itself. Six million Jews were murdered whilst much of the world stood by in silence, indifference, or complicity.
Painful ironies
Yet history carries painful ironies. The modern State of Israel was born from the ashes of Jewish persecution, but today stands accused across much of the world of inflicting systematic suffering on another people – the Palestinians – whilst projecting overwhelming military power throughout the Middle East.
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The founding of Israel in 1948 followed centuries of antisemitism, culminating in the Holocaust. For Jews emerging from Europe’s death camps, the idea of a sovereign homeland was inseparable from survival. But for Palestinians, Israel’s birth was also the Nakba, the catastrophe marked by displacement, dispossession, and exile.
Two historical traumas collided, and the region has lived with the consequences ever since. Over the decades, Israel evolved from a vulnerable state surrounded by hostile neighbours into the dominant military force in the Middle East. It fought multiple wars with Arab states, occupied territories captured in 1967, and developed one of the world’s most sophisticated military and intelligence apparatuses.
The occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza, repeated wars in Lebanon, and periodic military campaigns across the region have transformed Israel’s global image from the victim to occupier in the eyes of many observers. The devastation in Gaza after October 7 intensified this perception dramatically.
Hamas’ actions were barbaric and indefensible. But Israel’s response involving massive bombardment, destruction of infrastructure, widespread civilian casualties, and displacement on a catastrophic scale, prompted growing accusations that the state had abandoned the moral restraint expected from a nation founded in the aftermath of genocide.
Antisemitism as a shield
Around the world, many now ask a painful question: how did a people once persecuted become associated with policies widely condemned as collective punishment? This question is emotionally explosive because criticism of Israel is often entangled with antisemitism.
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Genuine antisemitism remains real and dangerous, and Jews should never be collectively blamed for the actions of any government. But shielding Israel from criticism by conflating all opposition with antisemitism also undermines honest moral scrutiny.
Israel’s conduct beyond Palestine has further fuelled concerns about regional dominance. Its repeated military operations in Lebanon, strikes in Syria, covert operations across the Middle East, and escalating confrontation with Iran reflect a doctrine built on overwhelming force and preemption.
Israeli leaders argue these actions are necessary for survival in a hostile region. Critics see an expanding appetite for regional control sustained by near-total military superiority and unconditional Western backing.
The nuclear double standard
Nowhere is the Israel contradiction more glaring than in the nuclear arena. Israel is widely understood to possess nuclear weapons, yet it has never officially acknowledged its arsenal, never joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and does not permit the kind of intrusive international inspections demanded of others.
Iran, by contrast, is an NPT signatory subject to international monitoring and inspections, despite long-running disputes over its nuclear ambitions.
To many countries outside the Western alliance system, this double standard is impossible to ignore. One state maintains nuclear ambiguity outside international frameworks whilst threatening military action against another state that remains formally inside them.
Whether one views Iran’s regime as dangerous or not, the imbalance weakens the credibility of the international order itself.
The tragedy of Israel is not simply that it became powerful. Power alone is not a crime. The tragedy is that a nation born from humanity’s failure to protect the vulnerable increasingly appears equally brutal to those under its control.
History does not grant permanent moral innocence. Victimhood cannot become a perpetual exemption from accountability. The memory of Jewish persecution should inspire universal opposition to dehumanisation, not selective outrage depending on who holds power and who suffers beneath it.
The lesson of World War II was never supposed to be that one people deserved supremacy for eternity because they once endured horror. The lesson was that no people, anywhere, should be subjected to domination, displacement, or collective punishment again.
‘Never Again’ redefined
“Never Again” loses meaning when it becomes tribal instead of universal. As the world commemorates 81 years since the fall of fascism in Europe, perhaps the hardest truth to confront is this: nations shaped by trauma can still inflict trauma.
READ MORE: Without Accountability, There’ll Never Be Justice. Nowhere
Memory alone does not guarantee morality. Power, unchecked by conscience or law, can transform even the historically oppressed into agents of oppression themselves. Contemporary Jews may have forgotten, but we haven’t.
There is still a chance to learn and change. That is not only Israel’s warning to the world. It is humanity’s.
Festo Mulinda is a political analyst and freelance columnist focusing on international relations and geopolitics. He can be reached at mulindafesto@gmail.com or on X as @fmulinda_III. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Chanzo. If you are interested in publishing in this space, please contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com.
