Quote of the day (2)

Golda Zandman, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor, who arrived in Israel largely thanks to the Swedish government, was amazed by this statement. "It's simply not true – the Swedes are not anti-Semites," she told Ynet on Sunday. "There is no such thing in Sweden. But what would Lieberman know about it? He emigrated from Russia."

Full article at Ynet.

Yad Vashem employee fired for mentioning Deir Yassin massacre

The Israeli Yad Vashem (Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority) has fired one of its employees, after a teacher of a group of yeshiva students had complained to Yad Vashem that the employee had mentioned the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre during a tour of the institution.

Read this article in Haaretz. Notably, the title of the article is a bit misleading. The ex-employee in question did not compare the Holocaust and Nakba, he compared the link between Zionist project and the Holocaust on one hand, and the link between Nakba and the Palestinian national project on the other.

An excerpt from Haaretz;

[The fired employee] Shapira said Yad Vashem chooses to examine only some of the events that took place in the War of Indpendence. "It is being hypocritical. I only tried to expose the visitors to the facts, not to political conclusions. If Yad Vashem chooses to ignore the facts, for example the massacre at Dir Yassin, or the Nakba ["The Catastrophe," the Palestinians' term for what happened to them after 1948], it means that it's afraid of something and that its historic approach is flawed," Shapira said.

Palestinians commemorate Holocaust

On the World Holocaust Remembrance Day, a Holocaust memorial was erected in Ni'lin, West Bank, Palestine. Hundreds of West Bank residents visited the site. One of the organizers of the event, Mohammad Amira, commented to Maan News Agency that

"We thought the public should understand the pain and suffering the Nazis caused the Jews ... Unfortunately, we are paying the price for the immense pain suffered by the Jews during the Holocaust."

"There is no comparison between our suffering and that of the Jewish people in the Holocaust, ... but everyone should understand that we are suffering too, as a result of what the Germans did to the Jews."

The Hamas movement, which de-facto governs the Gaza strip, had publicly denounced the Holocaust in mid-2008, stating that the Nazi atrocities

"was not only a crime against humanity but one of the most abhorrent crimes in modern history. ... And at the same time as we unreservedly condemn the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe, we categorically reject the exploitation of the Holocaust by the Zionists to justify their crimes and harness international acceptance of the campaign of ethnic cleansing and subjection,"

Luleå Holocaust Memorial

The news that Luleå muncipality had cancelled a Holocaust memorial event has reached the pages of the Jerusalem Post, thus making the squabble between local politicians in the northern Swedish town an international controversy.

I short note should be made here, the event was not organized (and cancelled) by the municipality as such, but by the Immigration Services Department of the municipality (not the municipal board, as stated in Jerusalem Post). The decision to cancel the event had been taken prior to the Gaza massacre, due to lack of participants in last year's event. Last year, most of the participants in the torch-light march had been municipal employees. This is not the first time the Holocaust memorial event has been cancelled by the municipality either.

Also noting a high level of political debate amongst the reader of jpost.com. One of the comments on the Luleå story:

"6. Swedes
Once a antismite always a antismite.The teach their kids the same hate that Hams and Hezfulah and the rest of jew hating arabs teach but in a modern way, not with suicide bombing but with suicide action.SHAME ON YOU.
sia - usa (01/27/2009 12:29)"

Holocaust guilt and the Gaza massacre - British Jewish MP denounces Israeli rhetoric in favour of the assault on Gaza

Gerald Kaufman, a Jewish Member of Parliament from the British Labour Party, has sharply condemned the usage of Holocaust guilt analogies in the rhetoric to support the Gaza massacre.

"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town.... A German soldier shot her dead in her bed, he said. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza,", Kaufman stated

"The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt from Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians,", he also stated.

Regarding the claims that the attacks were made against Palestinian militants, Kaufman commented that the Jews fighting in the Warsaw ghetto had also received such labels from the German occupants.

Read article in full at Haaretz
News links: I, II, III, IV, V, VI