What a strange dichotomy.
Somehow with the algorithms being what they are, an AI generated site has infiltrated my Facebook feed. I must have once liked one of their posts.
The name of the site is certainly intriguing. As someone interested in history-themed posts, I bit the bait and clicked on it.
The name of the site appears as “History Timeline.”
It often includes a moving text or story about WW II, mostly of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, sometimes in concentration camp settings, accompanied by beautiful vintage photographs.
For example, it shared a searing vignette about a little girl, alongside a black and white photo from the period, depicting an absolutely beautiful little girl fashionably dressed, sporting a 1930s or ’40s short bob haircut with a side barrette, outfitted in a smocked dress replete with Peter Pan collars. Alternatively, the boys are equally impeccably outfitted in vintage style. The grownups as well. The men are almost dapper and the women exude feminine romantic-like silhouettes. The US soldiers are always very handsome with nary a mark of war on them.
It could almost be old Hollywood pictures of Shirley Temple-era children or Clark Gable-like stars.
These fake AI enhanced images make the savagery of the Holocaust look beautiful.
Are the vignettes true? And the fake pictures only constructed to give image to the story?
Perhaps they are true, perhaps they are lies. More likely the latter.
And what a terrible thing to do. To disrespect and distort real time anguish, experiences and memory of actual scarred survivors and their actual lived experiences of war, loss and horror.
Never mind the offense in tampering with the integrity of history.
Meanwhile, in real life, we are living through another war. In Gaza.
And lo, I come across in my feed AI pictures from the current war, reminiscent of actual Holocaust atrocities and massacres. I see a photo with piles of hundreds and hundreds of dead corpses piled high, with the accompanying text of how Israel shot a group of over 800 Gazans.
Again, distorting the Holocaust. This time, instead of enhancing AI photos to make the grotesque dehumanizing agony of shattering war look beautiful, as History Timeline did, the photos were cynically manipulated and contorted to make the already heartbreaking situation in Gaza worse than the already painful reality — again, invoking Holocaust era images.
The enhanced AI pictures clean up how the Jews looked upon their arrival in Auschwitz after the horrendous cattle car journeys, or during the notorious selections, instead, showcasing beautiful high society-like people who are fashionably dressed and look like they practically emerged from a spa or a hotel.
One noticeably missing feature in some of these fake AI pictures: the yellow star, the “Jude” patch, that Jews were forced to wear.
Abusive labor camps. Mass shootings. Hangings. Gas chambers. Crematoria. It’s beautiful. It’s smooth. It has a country club-like patina.
And as painful as this war in Gaza is — I can’t help but wonder: When will this frighteningly drawn out war finally end? When will we stop seeing the terrible hutar le-pirsum death notices of beautiful young soldiers sacrificing their lives, draping Israel in mourning and grief? When will we see the return of the remaining hostages? When will we see innocent Gaza refugees or children in Gaza stop having to pay the heartbreaking price of their horrible suffering all because of the diabolical Hamas leadership, bent on Israel’s destruction above all else? — the AI pictures are recruited in inverse manner, to make this war seem like the Holocaust.
In this batch of AI pictures, instead of stealing the lived pain of the Holocaust from the Jewish people’s history, the pictures artificially grafting it onto the current war Israel is fighting for its sliver of a state, the place of the Jewish people. This harrowing war of survival and legitimacy, Israel didn’t ask for. Yet Israel will bravely, courageously, and justly sacrifices and fights for its collective survival, its place in this world.
In a clear-headed world, people would not only not abandon, isolate or perversely vilify Israel, but would rally around Israel.
Lest it seem that my concern here regarding the fake AI enhanced and generated photos is optics, make no mistake. That couldn’t be further from my point. My vision and desire is the vision that the prophets bequeathed me. “ . . . Lo yisa goy el goy cherev ve-’lo yilmedu od milchamah, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
In King Solomon’s timeless poem, a poem tinged with a note of sadness, his wisdom brilliantly captures a certain mystery of life in this world: “To everything there is a season . . . ” It includes, “A time to be born, a time to die,” “A time to plant and a time to pluck that which had been planted” — and “A time of war, and a time of peace.”
The Prophets words are what we must strive for. King Solomon’s words are reality we are confronted with.
According to the famous Roman wisdom, the two are not separate, but intertwined. “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum,” or “Pax Per Bellum.” “If you want peace, prepare for war” or “Peace Through War.”
I do believe that forging peace through strength is a crucial dimension of peacemaking, but it’s hard to feel the famous Latin saying’s truth right now. Funerals, mourning, grief and sorrow, engulf Israel right now. Families have been destroyed on both sides of the border because of a monstrous terrorist mentality of pure hate.
Wrestling with war, with this war of survival at Israel’s doorstep, has surely sown generational trauma for years to come.
The Holocaust was not beautiful, not a charming Hollywood-esque event. Lies cannot sanitize history. It’s a dangerous and wrong game to play. This war of survival Israel is fighting, like all cursed wars, has tragically brought death and destruction, and its pain reverberates deeply. But it’s not the Holocaust. It’s not fought like the Holocaust, like social media lies can lead one to believe.
It’s not about optics. It’s about authenticity. About facts. About truth.
That’s another frontier of this war Israel seems to be fighting.
Creating phony AI content that subverts reality — and other blood libels about Israel, perhaps as misguidedly created distractions from this desperate moment, or, more likely, with willful malevolent intent, passing this AI content off as “documentation”or “facts,” when in fact, it is pure fiction — only intensifies this unfortunate “season of war,” deepening the wounds of this war pushing away the words of the prophets.
Words that, even in a time of necessary war, we still strive for: “Lo yisa goy el goy cherev ve-lo yilmedu od milchamah.”
© IJN 2025
