Reporter's Notebook: Reflecting on similarities between the 1930s and today

I returned from Poland last week after reporting on the European Jewish Association (EJA) delegation to Auschwitz for The Jerusalem Post. I first visited Poland on a tour 20 years ago, when 1930s conditions felt entirely absent from our horizon.To be sure, real dangers loomed then: Israel endured the violence of the Second Intifada, the shadow of 9/11 remained fresh, and the memory of World War II sacrifices kept explicit Jew-hatred pushed to the margins.Over the two decades following Israel's 2005 disengagement from Gaza, recurrent conflicts with Hamas became routine behind the shield of the Iron Dome.Yet while rocket barrages were intercepted, Israel steadily lost the information war as social media weaponized misinformation, fueling demonization and accelerating global antisemitism.The 2001 Durban Conference served as the strategic birthplace of tactics later institutionalized by the 2005 BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.West's moral testWhen I last visited Poland, such voices were largely confined to academia; by 2026, they have conquered mainstream institutions. That gradual erosion collided with October 7, 2023, a moral test the West largely failed as Jew hatred erupted openly in Western capitals.Standing later beside the ruins of the gas chambers at Birkenau, I was reminded of how desperately the Nazis worked to conceal their crimes, staging an elaborate facade at the Theresienstadt Ghetto to fool the Red Cross into…