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Tag: Holocaust

  • Israel’s Assault on Gaza Proves the Nakba Never Ended

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    Original article by AMY GOODMAN DENIS MOYNIHAN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Palestinian children are pictured near makeshift tents in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on March 7, 2024. 
    (Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    What followed the initial displacement and killing of Palestinians in 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.

    Palestinians and allies marked the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, May 15—the day after the state of Israel was formally declared. “Nakba” is Arabic for “catastrophe,” and is used to describe the murder, dispossession, and forced displacement Palestinians suffered in the years up to and including 1948. As many as 900,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. Thousands were killed, massacred by Israeli militias like the Irgun and the Stern Gang or while fleeing on foot with no food or water, and some while engaged in armed resistance. What has followed since 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.

    Israel’s assault on Gaza has been termed a genocide by an increasing number of United Nations member states and international legal experts. Egypt joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where an emergency hearing was called this week, following Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah. In Gaza, the official death toll is now over 35,000 Palestinians. Israel’s siege is also responsible for widening famine in Gaza.

    “What we are seeing now, what unfolds in front of our eyes, is a genocidal situation, by which people are targeted, whether they are children, babies, in hospital, or in schools. This is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing, of depopulation,” renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who as an Israeli soldier fought in the 1973 war, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “The Nakba has never really ended for the Palestinians, so it’s a new horrific chapter in the ongoing Nakba that the Palestinians are suffering.”

    Ironically, Israeli nationalists, many who deny that the Nakba occurred at all, are now calling for a second one.

    Professor Pappé was just detained when he flew into Detroit, and described on Facebook two hours of FBI questioning before being released. He said they asked, “Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the ‘conflict’ (seriously, this is what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America?”

    This week, on Nakba Day, Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a Palestinian historian and endowed Arab studies chair at Rice University, said on Democracy Now!:

    “The Nakba is continuing. We have to understand that this is a colonial continuum. This is a structural process. It is not an event. And what we’re seeing now in Gaza is very much connected to what happened in 1948.”

    Professor Takriti assigned historical blame on the United Nations, the United States, and Britain:

    “You had a very aggressive settler-colonial movement develop in Palestine under British rule. It was armed under British rule. It was trained under British rule.”

    Professor Takriti continued, “The Israeli project is very much intertwined with American foreign policy toward the Palestinian people. They don’t see us as human beings. They want to destroy us. But they know that they have to present it in self-defense terms so that it’s palatable to the broader public… this is just a racist, criminal project that is leading and causing immense pain and suffering.”

    South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is seeking to do just that. On Thursday, human rights attorney Adila Hassim spoke at the ICJ emergency hearing, her voice betraying emotion as she recited grim statistics:

    Children have suffered particularly severely. More than 14,000 have been killed. Thousands more have been injured or lost family members, while an estimated 17,000 children are unaccompanied or separated. Make no mistake. These conditions are a direct result of Israel’s military onslaught on the besieged enclave with full knowledge of the destructive consequences of this humanitarian crisis. In these circumstances, the thwarting of humanitarian aid cannot be seen as anything but the deliberate snuffing out of Palestinian lives, starvation to the point of famine, obstructing aid in the face of famine, and killing of at least 200 aid workers.

    Hassim concluded, “Israel must be stopped.”

    Ironically, Israeli nationalists, many who deny that the Nakba occurred at all, are now calling for a second one. “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48,” wrote Knesset member Ariel Kellner. On Tuesday, at an Israeli Independence Day march, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir addressed thousands, saying, “First, we must return to Gaza now! We are coming home to the Holy Land! And second, we must encourage emigration. Encourage the voluntary emigration of the residents of Gaza!”

    Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza must end immediately. Ultimately, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and U.S. support for the occupation, also must end. It’s not good for Israel or its national security. It’s devastating for Palestinians. It’s illegal and immoral.

    Original article by AMY GOODMAN DENIS MOYNIHAN republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • Instead of Holocaust Museum, Detour Signs Direct Israel’s Herzog to The Hague

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    Original article by COMMON DREAMS STAFF republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Human rights activists of Amnesty International hold traffic boards showing the way to the International Criminal Court for the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog on March 10, 2024 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The President of Israel is in Amsterdam to open the Holocaust Museum. (Photo by Pierre Crom/Getty Images)

    “How is it possible that such a sacred space is being used to normalize genocide today?” asked one Dutch Jewish organizer behind the protest.

    Human rights activists in The Netherlands greeted Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday with large protests and directed him towards the International Criminal Court at The Hague over his nation’s alleged war crimes against the Palestinian people in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza.

    Herzog was in Amsterdam to attend the opening of the new National Holocaust Museum, but demonstrators said Herzog’s presence needed to be challenged given the large scale death and destruction that Israel’s military has unleashed in Gaza over the last five months.

    As Al-Jazeera reports:

    Dutch Jewish anti-Zionist organization Erev Rave, which organized the demonstrations at the musuem’s opening with the Dutch Palestinian community and Socialist International, said that while it is important to honor the memory of Holocaust victims, it cannot stand by while the war in Gaza continues.

    “For us Jews, these museums are part of our history, of our past,” said Joana Cavaco, an activist with Erev Rav, addressing the crowd before the museum’s opening ceremony. “How is it possible that such a sacred space is being used to normalize genocide today?”

    A pro-Palestinian Dutch organization, The Rights Forum, called Herzog’s presence “slap in the face of the Palestinians who can only helplessly watch how Israel murders their loved ones and destroys their land.”

    Along Herzog’s route through the city, members of Amnesty International—which has accused Israel of apartheid and backed the findings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which said policies in Gaza may amount to genocide—carried fake detour signs pointing the motorcade towards the nearby ICC.

    As the president of Israel, Amnesty International Netherlands said Herzog “is the political symbol of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. It is unfortunate that Herzog was invited after his controversial statements. That is why we are taking action.”

    Amnesty and other rights groups have documented numerous incidents in Gaza and the West Bank that they say may amount to “war crimes,” including the indiscriminate bombing of civilians areas, the use of prohibited weapons like white phosphorous, attacks on hospitals and emergency medical personnel, the blocking of life-saving food, water, and other supplies, and other acts of “callous disregard for Palestinian lives.”

    At a square nearby the museum where Herzog gave his speech, reportsReuters, demonstrators crowded the streets and chanted slogans like “Cease-fire Now!” and “Stop Bombing Children!” as they held signs that read “Jews Against Genocide” and “The Grandchild of a Holocaust Survivor Says: Stop Gaza Holocaust.”

    Ahead of Sunday’s opening, the Jewish Cultural Quarter that operates the new museum, said in a statement that it was “profoundly concerned by the war and the consequences this conflict has had, first and foremost for the citizens of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”

    The statement said the museum stands “for a just and resolution for all those directly involved” and the impact the ongoing violence and hatred is having beyond the Middle East:

    The reduction to black-and-white opposites and apparently incompatible arguments – oppressed against oppressor, good against bad, truth against lie. This polarization has spread hatred toward Jews and Islamophobia. It takes courage to speak out against injustice. It takes courage to recognize that the real world is complex and contradictory, and that our empathy need not be confined to one side.

    At the heart of the National Holocaust Museum’s mission is the desire to build a just society in the Netherlands by signalling the danger of dehumanizing and excluding those who live among us. That is the message in our presentation, our educational program and our events.

    The group said Herzog had been invited to attend the opening prior to the Hamas-led attack on October 7 of last year, but that the fighting since has only further revealed the importance of remembering and learning from the past.

    That “the war continues to rage,” the statement concluded, “makes our mission all the more urgent.”

    Original article by COMMON DREAMS STAFF republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Israeli President Herzog Opens Holocaust Museum In Amsterdam … ›

    With Genocide in Gaza, the Word ‘Never’ Has Been Stripped From ‘Never Again’

  • Survivors mark 79 years since the liberation of Auschwitz

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/survivors-mark-79-years-since-the-liberation-of-auschwitz

    People light candles by the monument at the Birkenau Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, January 27, 2024

    SURVIVORS of Nazi death camps marked 79 years since the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau at a modest ceremony in southern Poland on Saturday.

    About 20 survivors of various camps set up by Nazi Germany across Europe laid wreaths and flowers and lit candles at Auschwitz’s Death Wall, where thousands of inmates, mostly Polish resistance members and others, were executed.

    Later the group, along with state officials and other participants, gathered for a ceremony by a brick women’s barrack at nearby Birkenau that has recently undergone conservation.

    The group prayed and lit candles at the monument in Birkenau, near the crematoria ruins, to remember around 1.1 million camp victims, mostly Jews.

    Events were also held in many other countries to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the Nazis’ killing nearly six million European Jews and countless others.

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/survivors-mark-79-years-since-the-liberation-of-auschwitz

  • Israel: a wolf in sheep’s clothing

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/israel-wolf-sheeps-clothing

    Israeli soldiers move near the Israeli-Gaza border as seen from southern Israel, January 8, 2024

    From working closely with Apartheid South Africa to develop its nuclear weapons to supplying the far-right terrorists in Nicaragua with their famous Uzis, Israel has always been a malevolent force internationally, writes JOHN GREEN

    WHEN the state of Israel was created in 1948, albeit under dubious circumstances involving the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from their traditional homes, it enjoyed global sympathy and goodwill.

    As the horrendous facts of the Holocaust became better known at the end of the war, a haven for the Jewish people was widely seen as an appropriate and justified solution to prevent such horrors from happening again.

    That goodwill has, over time, become strained and misused. Israel’s role in oppressing the Palestinians but also in aiding and abetting some of the most reactionary forces in the world has more than tarnished its image.

    The latter role, though, has been kept largely hidden from the public eye. Israeli co-operation with reactionary forces began very soon after its establishment as a state.

    …

    Continue reading at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/israel-wolf-sheeps-clothing

  • ‘Stop Vetoing Peace,’ Rabbis Tell Biden at UN Security Council Protest

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    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Rabbis hold a peace action at the United Nations Security Council in New York on January 9, 2024.  (Photo: Jews for Racial & Economic Justice)

    “The U.N. was created in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, with the very intention of ensuring ‘Never Again,’” said Rabbis for Ceasefire. “We are here as Jews, as rabbis, to urge the U.N. to follow through.”

    After arriving at the United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, ostensibly for a scheduled tour, three dozen rabbis and rabbinical students made their way into the U.N. Security Council’s chamber to stage the latest high-profile demonstration demanding the United States end its opposition to a cease-fire in Gaza.

    The rabbis—whose action was organized by Rabbis for Cease-fire, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, and IfNotNow—displayed banners with messages for U.S. President Joe Biden: “Biden: The World Says Cease-Fire,” and “Biden: Stop Vetoing Peace.”

    The protest came weeks after the U.S. alone vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for Israel to end its bombardment of Gaza, which has killed at least 23,210 people, injured more than 59,100, and left thousands more missing and feared dead under rubble, as the population of the enclave faces starvation and disease stemming from Israel’s blockade.

    “[President Joe] Biden and the U.S. must stop vetoing peace and end Israel’s bombing and starvation of Gaza,” said IfNotNow.

    In addition to vetoing the Security Council measure last month, the U.S. abstained from voting on a resolution to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and opposed a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for a cease-fire.

    The country’s isolated stance was starkly illustrated by the latter vote, with 153 nations supporting the cease-fire, including longtime U.S. allies like Canada, France, and Spain backing the resolution, and only nine countries joining the United States.

    “Since the Biden administration is consistently, single-handedly blocking the U.N. from taking any meaningful action for a cease-fire, we are organizing 36 rabbis and rabbinical students from seven different states to come to the U.N. themselves, and say, ‘We’re speaking for the people, this is a moral call,’” Sophie Ellman-Golan, communications director for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, told HuffPost.

    Organizers said at a press conference after the protesters were escorted out of the building that six of the rabbis had gained access to the U.N. General Assembly floor, where they displayed one of the banners to the assembled leaders.

    HuffPost reported that one of the rabbis signaled the beginning of the protest during the tour by blowing into a traditional shofar horn, while Rabbis for Cease-fire founder and lead organizer Alissa Wise quoted the biblical Book of Isaiah.

    “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks,” said Wise. “Nation shall not lift up swords against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore.”

    The groups called on the U.S. and all U.N. members to:

    • Reaffirm and recommit to the goals of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, taking meaningful action to stop the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza;
    • Hold another Security Council vote to pass a resolution for cease-fire that includes lifting the siege and hostage exchange; and
    • Bring to the General Assembly a resolution calling for appropriate accountability measures in line with international law, including an immediate arms embargo.

    “The U.N. was created in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, with the very intention of ensuring ‘Never Again,’” said Rabbis for Cease-fire. “We are here as Jews, as rabbis, to urge the U.N. to follow through on this noble mission. Never again means never again for any of us.”

    An organizer said as the rabbis assembled that “the U.N. is the appropriate place for meaningful action for cease-fire and accountability for Israel’s war crimes.”

    The demonstration came two days before the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s top judicial body, is set to hold a hearing on South Africa’s lawsuit claiming Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza. Turkey, Malaysia, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation have all expressed support for South Africa’s claim, while Jordan indicated last week it had filed documents to submit a Declaration of Intervention at the court, backing the lawsuit.

    More than 900 worldwide civil society groups have joined a call for other governments to submit Declarations of Intervention to bolster South Africa’s case.

    The Biden administration said Tuesday that South Africa’s case is “meritless,” despite the country’s detailed, 84-page complaint highlighting specific calls from Israeli officials to wipe out the population of Gaza and force them to leave the enclave.

    “The U.S.,” said Rabbis for Cease-fire, “is standing in the way of the international community taking action to save lives.”

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).