2012 is not 1944. At all. And we can't let it be.

Toulouse, France. A madman kills four people: one adult and three children. Tragic. Awful. But this was not just any madman and any four people. Reframed: A Muslim terrorist kills four Jews outside a Jewish school: a rabbi, two of his children and the principal's daughter. Yet another anti-Semitic act in a long history of racism and suffering. At the AIPAC Conference in early March, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that 2012 is not 1944, invoking the powerful image of the Holocaust and the unknown loss of Jewish lives as a result of the United States not bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz, despite Jewish pressure upon the Roosevelt Administration and War Department to save innocent people. 2012 is not 1944, indeed. 2012 is not 1944 because in 1944, there was no Israel and though the Allied Powers were fighting the Axis Powers diligently, 6,000,000 Jews and 5,000,000 non-Jews were being shuttled to death through a terror network beyond our imagination. When Netanyahu invoked the memory of the Shoah, he did so in the context of saying that Israel would fight to protect herself in light of the Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons. His use of that image at AIPAC was done to inspire the thousands of conference-goers who would be lobbying their Congressional delegation the next day to urge the Congress to support efforts (political and/or military) to stop Iran's nuclear aspirations. 2012 is not 1944.

A couple of weeks after the AIPAC Conference, a Muslim terrorist shot a rabbi and three children. The world responded overwhelmingly with shock and horror. France, home to anti-Semitism for centuries, had school children stand in silence and the French President used the opportunity to teach that racism has no place in his country. The French President went beyond merely offering condolences, Sarkozy sent the French Foreign Minister to the funeral of the victims, who were buried in Israel. Indeed, 2012 is not 1944. It is not 1933 or any of the intervening years between Hitler's rise to power or his defeat. World leaders were hardly doing enough – if anything – to protect the Jews in the 1930s and 40s. And there certainly was no Jewish sovereign nation with which to protect ourselves prior to 1948.

But 2012 is not 1944 and we would be wrong to wrap ourselves in a cocoon and think that the world is attacking us again because a madman, who seems to have been acting alone, wreaked havoc one day. While we must be vigilant against racism and keep our guard up always, the world does not want to destroy us and by and large, Israel has found acceptance in the world. Are there Arab nations and terror groups who seek Israel's downfall? Yes, all around and that is why a strong Israeli military is needed. However, the existential threat to Judaism, the Jewish people, and Israel comes less from outside and more from inside. I pray for a day when Jews are not gunned down for being Jews, when black American youths are not gunned down for wearing hooded-sweatshirts, when Syrian activists are not killed by their own government for raising their voice in protest, when all the nations of the world will fulfill the prophecy declared by Isaiah (which is emblazoned on the walls of the United Nations): Nation shall not lift up sword against another and none shall learn the ways of war anymore. May we all be able to sit, as Micah hoped, beneath our grapevine and fig tree without fear.