It is appropriate to show support for Palestine at a Holocaust Memorial
JVL Introduction
A group of young people from an anti-fascist youth camp visited Mauthausen Concentration Camp, some of them wore T Shirts that showed their support for Palestine and Palestinians. This caused outrage and a video that went viral on social media.
Gideon Levy writes: “N12 News, the website of Israel’s Channel 12 News, called it “extraordinary footage from a concentration camp.” But what is so extraordinary about people who understand the term “Never Again” as a call for never having what was done to us done to any other nation?”
This is yet again an example of conflating Jews with Israel, and support for Palestinians with antisemitism and, here presumably, a lack of respect for the horrors of the Holocaust. What better way to respect a genocide than by campaigning against another?
Here Levy also reminds us of the visits made by Israeli High School students to Auschwitz not, it seems to learn the lesson that these young people understood, that “never again” applies to everyone but rather to reinforce nationalism and also, I would contend, permanent victimhood.
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Sun 9 Aug 2026. Read the original here.
A 'Free Palestine' T-shirt at a Holocaust Memorial Is No Contradiction
Teens visited Austria’s Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial last week with slogans calling for the liberation of Palestine. Should the teens be condemned, or rather, the atrocities they cry out against in the shadow of the lessons of the Holocaust?
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Gideon tells “truth to power” – in spite of the costs to him personally. If more of Gideon’s professional colleagues did the same, maybe we’d not be watching another genocide.
On July 30th there was a ceremony in Rotterdam to remember the Jews that were gathered at that particular place, Loods 24, a harbour shed, and from there were transported to the east. Almost 700 children among them. For those children there is also a monument in that spot.
One of the speakers was the Israeli ambassador. Over sixty organisations and lots of civil servants from Rotterdam and political parties protested against that, and demanded that the mayor of Rotterdam would not attend, but she came anyway and she and the ambassador spoke. I was one of ten people in the audience that undertook in a silent protest: with the very first word of the ambassador we stood up and turned our backs to him. No shouts, no slogan, just silence. Three of us were Jews, among them the chair of “Een Ander Joods Geluid” (Another Jewish Voice), Jaap Hamburger and all three had a shirt with “Never Again is Now” on it. Within five seconds most part of the audience turned into a lynching mob screaming “Nazi’s”, “Throw them in the water” and when people started to use violence “Harder, harder”. Quite a few wore Israeli flags and people started singing some kind of Israeli song. A man tried to tear off Jaap’s shirt, one young Jewish woman got beaten in her stomach, an elderly woman was dragged away, but this was by police who were over all quite ‘determined’. A man grabbed me harshly by my neck hissing “Now you are mine”, but a police officer just pushed me harder forward to get me going again. Several of us had bruises and we were all pretty shaken up by the eruption of aggression.
Almost all the media put it wrong in their articles about the incident saying that the protesters started shouting and acting inapropriate which was definitely not the case. Not one article mentioned the aggression of the other people.
I am perhaps not surprised that there have been no comments – Sometimes something can be too painful to look at and so may be best to put on one side for the time to be right. And in the meantime there is time and hopefully peace and reflection