The 'lessons of the Holocaust'

I don't know how I missed it when it first came out, but I recently came across the Guardian's 2003 article on Chinese workers in Israel (excerpts posted here), and it got me thinking again about that phrase, "The lessons of the Holocaust."

I've never understood what that means, "lessons of the Holocaust." It doesn't seem to mean that each group should have its own country where the members of that group can run things to suit themselves (except for Israel, of course!). It doesn't seem to mean that each of us should arm himself against governmental and other inimical forces. It doesn't even seem to mean that we should treat each with dignity and respect: As implied by this article, Israel imports foreign workers to displace Palestinian workers, and then transfers its hatred of Palestinians to their new surrogates.

I know there are thousands of other instances wherein that "light unto the nations" behaves brutally toward others, including those in its midst, and I'm not singling out this article to give short shrift to the more serious examples. But seeing how poorly Israel has learned the lessons that Jewish leaders constantly harangue non-Jews to study, it appears to me that "the lessons of the Holocaust" is actually a newspeak term that translates to "the weapon of the Holocaust." This weapon is to be wielded only by Jews, as many non-Jewish pretenders have painfully discovered.