An Open Letter on the misuse of Holocaust memory
JVL Introduction
Eminent scholars of the Holocaust and antisemitism have issued a strongly worded statement, deploring the use of Holocaust imagery in relation to the current crisis in Israel and Gaza.
The Holocaust framing, they argue, obscures our understanding of the antisemitism Jews face today, and dangerously misrepresents the causes of violence in Israel-Palestine.
It is being used to promote racist narratives about the Palestinians, portraying the conflict as a simple battle of good against evil, not one with a history and a context of displacement, occupation, and blockade which have generated an ever-deteriorating spiral of violence.
This requires a political solution. “[Any historical] resonances should serve as an injunction against wide-scale killing, not as a call to extend it”.
This article was originally published by New York Review of Books on Mon 20 Nov 2023. Read the original here.
An Open Letter on the misuse of Holocaust memory
Appealing to the memory of the Holocaust obscures our understanding of the antisemitism Jews face today and dangerously misrepresents the causes of violence in Israel-Palestine.
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What an excellent article So very well explained There should be no comparisons to the Holocaust were over 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis
Instead of comparing what is happening in Israel and Gaza to the Holocaust
If anything the Holocaust should be a subject taught in every school in order to make sure it will never happen again
That way all those Innocent Men Women a Children who were murdered at that time will be remembered for the. Peace they will have brought to the world by paying with their lives which should never be forgotten
What happened on the 7th of October was war crimes carried out by Hamas and any Human being with feeling and compassion for their fellow man woman and child Rightfully Condemned it as such
But let’s not forget a response was expected from the Israeli Government But not on a scale like what is happening now and since the 7th of October
But we cannot blame all the Israeli People for that either can we blame all the Palestinian People for what Hamas done
My own view is the reporting by the media on what happened on the 7th of October escalated things by the propaganda they reported in line with what the government’s not just the Israeli Government
But also the USA and the UK Government along with other Western Governments along with the Media in those countries And who are also guilty of the Propaganda that was put out by them without yet knowing the full story of what happened
Consequently this helped give the green light to the Israeli Government to go and bomb the Palestinian People in Gaza in a way that has not been seen before killing thousands of innocent Palestinian men women and children in …
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Thank you
Regrettably Israel’s actions against the Palestinians is like Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany’s actions against the Jews. I do see links with the Holocaust. The ghettos into which Jews were herded are like the ghetto of Gaza and the strangulation of West Bank villages. The demonisation and dehumanisation of Palestinians have parallels with how Jews were viewed allowing and encouraging the indifference towards the way they were treated by the state apparatus. For 100 years (and more so recently) we have all witnessed the mass killing, maiming, imprisonment and expulsion of Palestinians + loss of their land, livelihood and legal rights. Israel wants to be rid of the Palestinians, the Arabs in the country. It wants to be a Jewish only state. Do we not all see parallels with the Holocaust? Sadly and shamefully, those who had been on the receiving end of such terror, abuse and destruction have become the perpetrators on others.
I first went to Israel in 1965. I saw a couple sitting having coffee outside a cafe. They had tattoos on their arms. They were clearly survivors from Auschwitz. The reaction from my family and others in Israel was not of sympathy but to blame them for not having left for Israel before WW2. Enduring the concentration camps had been their fault. It was after the 1967 War when Israeli confidence and arrogance was evident and international sympathy for ‘poor’ Israel was less certain that Israel started to use the Holocaust as a weapon to remind the West that it had abandoned Jews in Europe and had a debt to be paid – even if that meant a debt of turning a blind eye to Israel ridding itself of non-Jews in the country. Whenever Israel is under attack/ admonished, it excuses itself with reminding everyone that Jews suffered under the Holocaust. Jews did but does that mean Israel has exceptional status to do whatever to other people?
The question is a simple one, but the Zionists will not answer it: they dare not even acknowledge it has been asked. It is this:
What Hitler’s Germany did to Europe’s Jews fits in with the standard definition of genocide. What word best describes the actions taken by Israel against the Palestinians?
The parallels are too many to ignore, and the Zionists’ and their allies’ screeching denial of even the smallest connection between the Germany of the 1930s and the Israel of today is hypocrisy at its worst.
And their use of the word Holocaust in connection with the Hamas attack is either a huge failure of perception or deeply self-serving and self-justifying propaganda.
Sadly Academics know far more about wording & its use or abuse but when a non academic person needs to describe a horror of inhumanity especially a 75 year horror much ignored by those who played a part in its creation!
A previous person mentioned the similarities of dehumanising, we add to that the imprisonment of Palestinians in their own country & squeezed into an area small enough for Zionists to control & spy on every minute of Palestinian lives! Turnstiles, barbed wire, check points manned by aggressive & violent soldiers!
Each soldier having authority to deny Palestinians entry to either, work, family visits or crucial hospital or cancer treatments. Children with cancer die alone as parents are refused entry to sit with their dying children or families!
This IS the 21st century HOLOCAUST the Germans were meticulous record keepers !
Zionists prefer to keep their atrocities hidden, & truth is twisted to make Israel be the victim! Israel is not the victim it has over 3 billion dollars from the US each year plus weapons !
All that spent & used to annihilate Palestinians who are not allowed to protect themselves but Israel is!!!
This is not Judaism this is Zionism hiding behind Judaism & illegal settlers abusing the Talmud & Torah by using the violence written in it to suite their abysmal hatred of Palestinian farmers & murder or burn babies & children then celebrate that horror on video because they are superior to Arabs & anyone who disagrees with them!
It is Zionism that has increased antisemitism because Zionists use the Holocaust as an emotional shield even when they are themselves acting like vengeful terrorists!
Israel needs a Human being as a Leader not an ambitious corrupt liar !!!