When I saw a sign on my streetcorner in Chicago that said “The Holocaust is fake,” I immediately stopped. I had just left the pool and was on my way to shop for Shabbat. Disgusted, I brought an older neighbor to take a look. I knew he had taken down his mezuzah in fear after some of the protests after Oct. 7 and had only recently put another Jewish symbol back up.

I wanted company as I snapped a picture of the sign, but I also wanted him to be aware of what was happening in the neighborhood. Because these days, the truth and lies are blurred.

Later, I learned that similar stickers and graffiti, some of it misspelled, had appeared on other corners and benches on the Far North side of Chicago, traditionally a stronghold of the Jewish community here, which is the third largest in the U.S.

“Holocaust” and “fake” are two words whose meanings used to be clear to all. Yet the doubt cast on both “Holocaust” and “fake” represent two disturbing trends; their convergence is dangerous, and entirely predictable.

Those who traffic in Holocaust minimization and denial have been recent guests on The Joe Rogan Experience, the country’s #1 podcast, which has far more listeners than network television. Rogan, who has hosted the “Holocaust revisionist” Darryl Cooper, has 19.4 million subscribers on YouTube, 19.7 million on Instagram and 15 million on X. Meanwhile, NBC and CBS News average 5.6 and 3.6 million viewers, respectively.

Redefining fake

Meanwhile, the mainstream news media, where fact-checking is prized, has been maligned for years as “fake news,” a term the current U.S. president uses so often that no one blinks when something real is dismissed. When fact-checked information is “fake,” it’s not surprising to see history described that way too.

The Holocaust was the ultimate truth of the 20th century. The ghettos, the crematoria, the gas chambers — so many elements of the industrialized and intentional slaughter of an entire people were without precedent and were the final stop on centuries of anti-Jewish hatred.

In the weeks after Oct. 7, I was haunted by the thought that the “genocide” charge against Israel was not just about criticizing Israel, but at root, about minimizing the Holocaust.

The term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer who had lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust.

Yet the world’s oldest Holocaust archive changed its name in September 2019 from the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide to the Wiener Holocaust Library. The Library, located in London, stated that it wanted to clarify “the centrality of the Holocaust” to our work without changing its “commitment to furthering the study of genocide.”

A few years earlier, in 2011, Jeremy Corbyn, who would become Labour Party leader in 2015, sought to change “Holocaust Memorial Day” to “Genocide Memorial Day — Never Again for Anyone” in 2011. That prompted swift backlash.

“Holocaust Memorial Day already rightly includes all victims of the Nazis and subsequent genocides,” Karen Pollock, chief executive of the UK’s Holocaust Educational Trust, wrote at the time on Twitter. “But the Holocaust was a specific crime, with antisemitism at its core. Any attempt to remove that specificity is a form of denial and distortion.”

Changing the meaning of the word ‘Holocaust’

Increasingly, the word ‘Holocaust’ is being used to describe what was not the Holocaust.

Simon and Schuster is currently promoting a forthcoming book edited by Susan Abulhawa that it describes as documenting “the holocaust of our time.” The editor’s note accompanying the copy that reviewers have received is signed “From the river to the sea.”

According to the United States Holocaust Museum, “approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. This number represented 1.7% of Europe’s total population and more than 60 percent of the world’s Jewish population. By 1945, most European Jews — 2 out of every 3 — had been killed.”

The world Jewish population still hasn’t recovered its 1933 levels.

Even in this moment where words and numbers increasingly do not matter, there is no account — not even from the Hamas-run Health Ministry itself—-that suggests that 2/3 of Gazans have been killed in this conflict.

This is not to minimize the tremendous suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians in a war that began with a Hamas-led attack on Israel, in which some Gazan civilians participated. It was a horrible and harrowing two years.

Returned Israeli hostages have described being held in the homes of ordinary Gazans. CNN reported that three hostages were held in the home of a physician whose son was a freelance journalist for the US-based Palestine Chronicle. The son filed dispatches about the war in Gaza while his family held hostages.

Fact-check: A military attack and hostage-taking were not features of the Jewish community’s experience during the Holocaust.

What is real? What is fake?

Who’s a journalist? Who’s a hostage-holder?

What’s “news”? What’s “experience”?

What’s the difference between the Holocaust and the holocaust?

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In this world where facts can be fake and nothing is taboo, anything seems possible. You can make the Holocaust into a lower-case “holocaust.” You can make Raphael Lemkin, the columnist for Zionist World, into an anti-Zionist, which was what Lemkin’s family asserted that the Lemkin Institute was doing, as it used their relative’s name while attacking Israel. And you can put up a sticker in a Jewish neighborhood claiming that the “Holocaust is fake.”

Holding on to disgust

I wrote to various family members with a photo of the sign in my neighborhood. None reacted too strongly; “I hate to say it, but I’m numb to this already,” one wrote.

I’m glad I’m still disgusted. I’m writing this to encourage you to be disgusted, too. Resist the guests on podcast “experience” forums who claim that antisemitism is being exaggerated, and that the Holocaust wasn’t that bad.

Because once holocaust is just a word, marketing copy from a publisher, devoid of Jewish content, and cleansed of historical accuracy, all words can be redefined to serve this kingdom of lies we increasingly seem to be living in.

The post A sign in my neighborhood says ‘The Holocaust is fake’ — I wish I felt surprised appeared first on The Forward.

Republican and Democratic US senators called for a strong response from President Donald Trump’s administration after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized new territory in Sudan, reportedly attacking civilians.

Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for the US to officially designate the RSF as a foreign terrorist organization.

“The horrors in Darfur’s El-Fasher were no accident — they were the RSF’s plan all along. The RSF has waged terror and committed unspeakable atrocities, genocide among them, against the Sudanese people,” he said in a statement on X on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the committee’s top Democrat, said she most likely would back such a response from Washington. Asked whether she would back an FTO designation, Shaheen told reporters, “Probably,” but added she would like to take a longer look at the issue.

Shaheen criticized the United Arab Emirates, which is accused by the Sudanese army of providing military support to the RSF. The UAE denies it. “The UAE has been an irresponsible player who has contributed to one of the worst humanitarian crises that we have on the planet right now,” she said.

In an emailed statement, the UAE Strategic Communications Department said the UAE has consistently supported efforts to achieve a ceasefire, protect civilians and ensure accountability for violations and rejected claims it provided any form of support to either warring party.

“The latest UN Panel of Experts report makes clear that there is no substantiated evidence that the UAE has provided any support to RSF, or has any involvement in the conflict,” the statement said.

The war in Sudan erupted in April 2023 from a power struggle between the army and the RSF, unleashing waves of ethnic violence, creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and plunging several areas into famine. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and about 13 million displaced.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its plans for designating the RSF.

In January, the administration of Trump’s Democratic predecessor, then-President Joe Biden said it determined that members of the RSF and allied militias committed genocide in Sudan and imposed sanctions on the group’s leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The RSF denied harming civilians.

Al-Fashir, the Sudanese army’s last significant holdout in the western region of Darfur, fell to the RSF on Sunday after an 18-month siege that consolidated its control of the area. Aid groups and activists have warned of the potential for ethnically motivated revenge attacks as the RSF overwhelmed the army and allied fighters, many from the Zaghawa ethnic group.

Sudanese paramilitary forces beat and shot men fleeing from a long-besieged city in Darfur after capturing it, according to an account from escapee Ikram Abdelhameed, corroborated by statements from aid officials, satellite images, and unverified social media videos.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have resumed peace talks in Istanbul, four sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday, a day after Islamabad said the discussions had ended in failure.

Three of the sources said the nations had recommenced talks at the request of mediators Turkey and Qatar, to ensure they do not resume border clashes that have killed dozens this month.

One of the sources, a Pakistani security official, said Islamabad would press its central demand at the talks that Afghanistan take action against Islamist militants using its territory as a safe haven and to plan attacks on Pakistani soil.

“Most of the issues between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been resolved successfully and peacefully. A few demands from Pakistan need some extra time as they are difficult to be agreed upon,” said a source close to the Afghan Taliban delegation.

Islamabad accuses the Taliban of harboring the Pakistani Taliban, a separate militant group hostile to Pakistan, and allowing them to attack Pakistani troops from Afghan territory. Kabul denies this, saying it has no control over the group.

The sources declined to be named as they are not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.

The Afghan Taliban and Pakistan‘s military and foreign office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In Kabul, Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, speaking at a meeting at the Interior Ministry in a video posted online, urged Pakistan to address its own internal security problems instead of creating tensions in Afghanistan, warning that doing so would “cost them dearly.”

He said Afghanistan sought peaceful engagement with all countries but would defend itself if attacked. Haqqani said the Taliban had demonstrated strength both in conflict and in dialogue, adding that Afghanistan wanted relations based on mutual respect.

TALKS AIMED TO PREVENT REPEAT OF VIOLENCE

Dozens of people were killed this month along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the worst such violence since the Taliban took power in Kabul in 2021.

The October clashes began after Pakistani airstrikes earlier in the month on Kabul, the Afghan capital, among other locations, targeting the head of the Pakistani Taliban.

The Afghan Taliban administration responded with attacks on Pakistani military posts along the length of the 2,600-km (1,600-mile) frontier, which remains closed.

Both nations agreed to a ceasefire brokered in Doha on Oct. 19, but could not find common ground in a second round of talks mediated by Turkey and Qatar in Istanbul, Afghan and Pakistani sources briefed on the issue told Reuters on Tuesday.

Clashes between the Pakistani military and the Pakistani Taliban have continued throughout the ceasefire period, with multiple deaths reported on both sides on Sunday and Wednesday.

Pakistan said on Thursday it had killed a deputy leader of the group in an operation near the Afghan border, a victory for Islamabad in the years-long insurgency it has been fighting.

Qari Amjad, who Pakistan described as a “high-value target” and who was designated as a terrorist by the United States, was killed in a clash after trying to cross into Pakistan from Afghanistan. The militant group confirmed his death.