Netanyahu Exploits the Holocaust to Brutalize the Palestinians
JVL Introduction
Hagai El-Ad is the executive director of B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
Coming from him, the head of one of the most prestigious human-rights organisations round today, an accusation of abusing the memory of the Holocaust is not to be taken lightly.
Alas it is not an isolated event, but part of a clear pattern over recent years, as the related reports, linked to in various Haaretz articles (below), attest.
“[I]t remains in our hands” affirms an impassioned El-Ad, “to decide if the past’s painful lessons will be allowed to be turned on their head in order to further oppression – or remain loyal to a vision of freedom and dignity, justice and rights, for all.”
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Thu 23 Jan 2020. Read the original here.
Netanyahu Exploits the Holocaust to Brutalize the Palestinians
Netanyahu didn’t invent the idea of leveraging the Holocaust for political gain. Yet he is taking even that low to new depths, stripping Palestinians of basic human rights in the name of the survivors of the Holocaust
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Benjamin Netanyahu must be envious of one thing in the UK: the stranglehold which supporters of the Israeli state have on the British mainstream media. For what is striking about the above article, and many even more powerful and graphic articles about the horrors perpetrated against Palestinians which appear in the Israeli liberal newspaper Ha’aretz, is that no UK corporate newspaper would dare to publish them.
The IHRA must be challenged in court for a start.
I found Hagai El-Ad’s article profoundly moving. It exposes Netanyahu’s cynical hijacking of Holocaust Memorial Day and attempt to deflect the ICC’s prosecution of the Israeli Government of which Netanyahu is Prime Minister, for war crimes in Gaza. We must call on the UK Government to support the ICC.
George Wilmer’s comment is very perceptive. Beyond the immediate issue of antisemitism itself, I think many of us will have been horrified at the sight as the veil of the UK’s ‘free’ media has been drawn back. The blanket control of the main public avenues of analysis and debate truly gives the lie to any meaningful concept of a liberal and democratic society.
I read Netanyahu’s speech which he gave on Holocaust Day. He was clearly using the Holocaust to justify Israel’s existence and policies.
(For a full transcript – see https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-world-turned-it-back-on-us-full-text-of-netanyahus-holocaust-forum-speech/)
I want to quote just one sentence from his speech.
“It (ie the Holocaust – my words) is the culmination of what can happen when our people have no voice, no land, no shield.”
Apart from being completely wrong in his analysis of the causes of the Holocaust, his words are a chilling description of the current status of the Palestinian people.