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Due to international media being banned in Gaza and the most number of journalists killed in Gaza compared to any war in history, the situation in Gaza remains somewhat opaque. Israel claims the famine in Gaza is staged, while US President Trump wants to take over control of the strip, replace the population elsewhere in the world, and turn Gaza into a beach resort. In the meantime, heartbreaking reports of a famine, dying children, confirmed by UN sources, are making headlines around the world.
In this video, a holocaust survivor who went through the Nazi Holocaust when he was 7 years old stands up against what he says is “Genocide” in Gaza, explaining why this is so damaging against Jewish people, and why those who commit these crimes in Gaza feel like permanent victims.
“What’s happening in Gaza is a holocaust, and what is currently being designed by the Israeli government is the final solution to their Palestinian problem.”
My reaction is not in my name.
As a holocaust survivor, my reaction is not in my name.
Extermination, dehumanization, starvation, blockade, lack of water and medication, the destruction of the health service, the hunting down of doctors, the hunting down of journalists, safe places which turn out to be not safe at all but concentration camps— all this together makes a clear holocaust.
Clearly, all these elements are not in any way different from similar actions by the Nazis during the Second World War.
Gaza is an open-air concentration camp.
In a sense, it’s an extermination camp because there is no way out, other than dying through bombing, disease, or lack of food. The only alternative is to agree to be replaced somewhere where you don’t want to be.
I had not only the experience of the Holocaust and the hiding and the discrimination, etc, but the fighting went through our particular area where we were hiding. When we came out, when it was all over, I saw total devastation, just like when you visit the pictures of Gaza: destroyed buildings, piles of rubble, dead horses, dead people. I see exactly the same in Gaza.
However, there is a significant difference. What I witnessed was a byproduct of two armies fighting, and what I see in Gaza is deliberate destruction, and I think it’s a greater evil than what I’ve seen.
The license that has been employed against the Palestinians is based on experience from what happened in WW2. However, rather than concluding that this is something we must learn from and prevent from being repeated to others, they are actually using it as a license to a complete lack of accountability towards others.
I’m thinking now of when Netanyahu says Never again is now
It’s an apparent reference to the Holocaust experience. Justifying whatever they are doing, they are perceived as permanent victims, regardless of how aggressive they are towards others.
And another example, when the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, before making his contribution at the Security Council meeting, very theatrically put on a yellow star, I found that particularly upsetting and disgusting because I had to wear the yellow star even at age seven in 1944. However, they continually make this connection and use this cover to acquire total impunity. And that is the deliberate policy of the Zionists and the Israeli state.
Israel’s government creates an increase in antisemitism in the world.
Over because they conflate Judaism with Zionism and their current policies, and as we know, a considerable number of Jews who have a sense of justice are against it all. And yet, they pretend to be speaking and acting on behalf of all Jews.
It’s amazingly damaging to Jewish people the world over.
So, not only has it become evident that the Israeli state and Zionism are producing genocide in Gaza, but it is actually the very worst thing that could have happened to the Jewish people who are associated with these dreadful acts.
For Jewish people, and particularly anyone who survived the holocaust or their descendants, to dissociate ourselves. The actions of the Zionist state are significant.
And how important it is is proven by the reaction I got from the general public, who are grateful for our stand, making it clear that the Jewish people are not a solid block on the side of the apartheid and genocidal Israel.
Because, due to the holocaust, Israel and the Zionists claim total impunity.
And we see it in practice that this is accepted all around. They should not be in any way free of being called out as fascists, like we call out fascists elsewhere where we see them. And sadly, Israeli policies are now driven by clearly fascist characters, Ben Gvir and Smotrich.
Amongst others, the comparison between the extreme actions of the Zionists and the Nazi regime has a long history.
Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, in an open letter published in the New York Times in 1948, signed by many others as well, had already pointed out that the policies and beliefs of the Zionist organization.
Herut, which later evolved into the Likud party, shared similarities in ideology with those of the Nazis. If a comparison with the Nazi philosophies and practices was acceptable, then, so soon after the Holocaust, it surely must be adequate now. And we must protest against the taboo of not making any comparisons between the genocidal actions of the Nazi regime.
This latest initiative of theirs, of setting up a so-called humanitarian camp, is just another concentration camp.
Once you enter it, you’re forced to enter it because no other places are going to be left where you are free from being bombed. So, once in that camp, you’re not allowed to leave, except apparently the plan is to leave the country.
Supposing you don’t want to leave, the conditions inevitably were so awful in these camps because they’re overcrowded; there will never be adequate medical services available.
Therefore, there will be a gradual decline in numbers due to wastage and death through deprivation.
It’s a clear case of genocide.
And the parallel is obvious with Nazi camps. Some Nazi leaders, well known for being kind to animals, and because they regarded the Jews as human animals, they’re going to be like they would be to animals, humane in executing the complete extermination.
For example, by trying to avoid them knowing about their fates early enough, so that they don’t suffer anxiety. This was their kind of humanitarian idea. Once you are set upon an ethnic cleansing and the destruction of a people, you inevitably have to prepare it with the dehumanization of your subjects.
The gradual erosion of one’s perspective, resulting from being raised in these conditions, distorts people’s views, both intellectually and emotionally.
When asking a random person on the street in Jerusalem, how many civilians have been killed in Gaza from what you know? The answer was: “Who gives a shit? “ Okay, but don’t you feel, for example, that children were killed? Answer: “Children grow up to be Arabs. “
And I found that, sadly, even a part of my family, which suffered the Holocaust and ended up in Israel, had been completely reformed by this propaganda.
This even affected my cousin, who was a teenager during her deportation to Auschwitz and was put to work in warehouses where they were sorting the clothes of those who were killed in the gas chambers. One day, she had to sort her own parents’ clothes, which must have been an enormous trauma.
Eventually, she came back. She survived. And when I met her in Haifa, I found her racist, downright racist, just like all the others. And frankly, I found it almost incomprehensible that somebody with that experience was still prey to this propaganda.
A Taboo that must be broken
Any comparison between what’s happening in Gaza and the genocide there and the Holocaust, World War II, and any denial or prohibition of a comparison is a taboo that must be broken because it’s quite clear. The leadership of the Israeli government declares that the aim is ethnic cleansing and extermination.
Suppose we observe what is happening on a daily basis. In that case, the continuous murdering of the Palestinian civilian innocent population, witnessing all that and not protesting or looking the other way, is making us accept a virtual rebirth of a fascist regime.
We must resist it to be on the right side of history.
And about Netanyahu, he impersonates all that. He’s obviously a war criminal, as it has been established. However, we mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that it is simply a matter of Netanyahu, because the leadership around him, and unfortunately, a majority of the country, share the same mindset.
A politician in Israel said when asked in an interview:
If you gave me a button to erase Gaza, every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow. I would press it in a second. I would press it right now. I was hoping you could give me that button and press it right now. There you go. And I think most Israelis would.
No one is innocent in Gaza
A recent Hebrew University poll has shown that 82% of the Jewish Israeli population agrees that there are no innocents in Gaza. And what is needed is a complete dismantling of the Zionist state and the Zionist movement.
And we have to resist. The tendency towards travel in the direction of fascism at every stage; fascism, which happens incrementally in stages. We can already see this tendency, this direction of travel, clearly in countries like Germany and the United States, particularly on university campuses.
And more and more, we are seeing an incremental increase in the limitation of free speech and the freedom of protest here in this country.
I was an eyewitness to how the leader of the Stop the War coalition was treated.
Suddenly, the police converged on him as if by an order and very violently knocked him down and piled on top of him because it was unnecessary and shocking.
I thought it was intended as a message to a movement supporting the Palestinian people that they are after us. Subsequently, people who were standing right next to me, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, were called in for questioning under caution.
