Smearing Palestine protesters endangers us all
JVL Introduction
Last week’s Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked in Israel, as usual, with dire warnings about the threat to Jews worldwide if Israel is not defended by all possible means.
In this piece for Middle East Eye, the notion was challenged by Mark Etkind, one of a group of Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants who have been a notable presence on every demonstration in London protesting the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Etkind, who works closely with Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos, noted that police questioning the 87-year-old “over his participation in a pro-Palestine protest on 18 January is just one indicator of this very worrying trend towards more war and repression.”
NWI
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Wed 23 Apr 2025. Read the original here.
How the Holocaust is weaponised to repress anti-genocide voices
As a descendent of a Holocaust survivor, I have marched in pro-Palestine protests – and watched UK opponents try to smear us
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Leaving morality and human empathy aside (as they have been!), what is so ODD about Western leaders’ uncritical backing of genocidal Israel is irrational thinking and short-termism. Why continue to support a state when many different forms of evidence show this does increasing harm to your own interests at home and abroad? Why ignore the changing global balance of power which makes support for Israel either irrelevant or an unwelcome complication?
In 5 years or less Israel’s main political ally (America) won’t protect it. No other globally important state is likely to replace that lost US support.
A US polling analyst explained to Mondoweiss that already more 18 – 49 year old Americans don’t back Israel than do. Young, college-educated Americans (the ones more likely than most to move into positions of political and economic influence in the future) feel even more strongly. With Trump’s America spiralling down into economic, political and constitutional chaos, the US isn’t likely to provide much diplomatic cover or “freebies” to ANY foreign country in the near future.
Western leaders know their own populations hate what Israel’s doing (see the polling evidence, the marches, the new political groupings …) and resent them for supporting it. Cosying up to a weak America now makes less sense. With public contempt for politicians high and global recession looming, on pragmatic grounds alone jettisoning at least one of the policies making these leaders so unpopular would seem sensible.
Then there’s the Israeli dimension. Israel’s armed forces and society are in revolt against their government on many different grounds – one of them is the failure to end the unwinnable “war” on Gaza.
Why waste so much political capital in so many countries just to keep Israel’s current government in power?
I wrote this before this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah, on 23 April. On that day, in his speech at Israel’s National Holocaust Museum, Netanyahu again used the Holocaust to justify Israel’s wars. Not only did he say Hamas ‘are exactly like the Nazis’, he boasted that the Rafah Offensive, which he launched on Yom Hashoah last year, had led to victories in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran:
‘On Yom HaShoah exactly a year ago, exactly on that day, did we start our action in Rafah. And indeed it was a significant turning point in the war. Thanks to the heroism of our amazing soldiers we managed to take over the Philadelphia route. We killed thousands of terrorists and we killed the architects of the massacre: Yahya Sinwar, Deif and also Nasrallah from Lebanon. We’ve created the conditions for the toppling of the Assad regime. We’ve harmed Iran significantly. And … we changed the face of the Middle East. … The battle between us and the Empire of Terror in Iran will determine the fate of all free societies. If Israel loses this war, Western countries are next. The wave of zealots will wash upon all of them …’
Starmer’s statement for this year’s Yom Hashoah wasn’t that deranged. But he still took the opportunity to slander pro-Palestine activists:
‘Just as I made it my mission to root out the stain of antisemitism from my political party, so I will do the same for the country. We will protect our Jewish community, including Jewish students on our university campuses.’
Once Biden and Starmer set a precedent by slandering pro-Palestine campaigners as ‘antisemitic’, it was inevitable the right would take things further.
In his Yom HaShoah statement, Trump said he’d use all ‘legal tools to combat the explosion of anti-Semitic…
[cut to our limit of 300 words – admin]