Holocaust Survivors: Politicians Abusing Holocaust to Silence Dissent

Several Holocaust survivors have condemned “Israel’s” genocidal actions against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and criticized the entity’s “false anti-Semitic claims” used to justify the killing of over 37,550 Palestinians in the besieged area.

In a letter published on Saturday by Mondoweiss, 10 survivors  expressed that using the Holocaust to legitimize genocide in Gaza and to suppress pro-Palestinain protests on college campuses is a  “complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust.”

“As Holocaust survivors, we have no special authority on the Middle East but we do know about anti-Semitism. It’s simply wrong to claim that it’s anti-Semitic to oppose Israeli genocide. It’s also wrong to claim that calling for equal rights for Jews and Arabs “from the river to the sea” is anti-Semitic,” the letter read.

“As Holocaust survivors, we are just a few individuals but we want to add our voices to the growing global movement to demand a permanent ceasefire, an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and for the West to stop arming and supporting genocide,” it added.

The survivors referenced a recent Holocaust memorial event where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “We’ll defeat our genocidal enemies. Never again is now!”

The letter’s signatories also mentioned another memorial where US President Joe Biden warned of “ferocious surge of anti-Semitism” on college campuses.

“The dehumanization of Palestinians…, the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, indiscriminate bombing, the destruction of universities and hospitals, and the use of mass starvation — these are clearly stages of ethnic cleansing and genocide. They cannot be defended any more than sending weapons to commit this genocide or refusing funding to UNRWA,” the letter added.

“With no better arguments, our politicians have resorted to misusing the memory of the Holocaust while claiming that protesting against Israeli genocide is somehow anti-Semitic,” it said.

Weaponization of anti-Semitism

On a related note, pPro-Palestinian demonstrators at US universities faced predictable accusations of anti-Semitism amid their protests.

In April, the Director of Al Mayadeen’s office in Washington affirmed that an intensive media campaign is ongoing, aiming to associate the university solidarity movement with Palestine in the United States with “antisemitism”.

Despite it all, the intellectual Uprising is showing no signs of slowing down. Activists across the US, from California to New York, continue to demand that their institutions divest from Israeli companies involved in the genocide in Gaza.

It is worth mentioning that US universities, instead of upholding their students’ rights to peaceful protest and fostering an environment conducive to First Amendment-protected discourse, succumbed to pressure from affluent donors and congressional members. They opted for cracking down on student demonstrators.