Meet the “Holocaust Survivors Against Israel”
Meet the “Holocaust Survivors Against Israel”

When I read the title of the Italian daily La Repubblica, “Gaza, more than 300 Holocaust survivors against Israel”, I thought, wow!

Sorry, the survivors were not “more than 300,  not even “300”. There were 20. The others were children or grandchildren or distant relatives of survivors.

Yet, the story has swept the media all over the world. Who is behind the campaign which appeared in a full page ad in the New York Times? Do they believe Jews are supposed to continue to be victims?

The initiative was sponsored by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, an organization openly hostile to Israel.

Hajo Meyer, the first signatory on the list, is a well-known Dutch militant who just passed away, the author of a book called “The End of Judaism”, in which he explains, like a student of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that Zionism and Judaism are incompatible. Meyer compares Israel to Nazi Germany (“there are many similarities”, he wrote). Meyer did not hesitate to appear on Iranian television, Press TV, the voice of the ayatollahs in the world, the same people who condemn Israel to disappear from the map.

What’s better than the vulgarization of the Holocaust by a grandchld of survivors who directs a center of “Middle East Studies”?
The appeal is signed by Hedy Epstein, one of the most famous faces of the Freedom flottillas launched in solidarity with Hamas. She even flew to Cairo last month to participate in the demonstrations against Israel. She has recently embarked on a hunger strike for Gaza. Epstein is part of the Free Gaza Movement, whose founder Greta Berlin said: “The Zionists organized the concentration camps to kill millions of innocent Jews”.

The appeal bears the name of the Yiddish poet Irene Klepfisz, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto and she is the daughter of the Bundist hero Klepfisz Michael, killed during the uprising. She is one of the animators of the “Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza”.

You will also find Susan Slyomovics, who has made a distinguished career as a professor of anthropology at UCLA, where she leads the academic boycott of Israel.

Four years ago, during a conference at UCLA, Slyomovics said: “If Jews can get reparations from Germany, then the Palestinians should get reparations from Israel. After all, what the Germans did to the Jews is what Israel is doing to the Palestinians”.

What’s better than the vulgarization of the Holocaust by a grandchld of survivors who directs a center of “Middle East Studies”? 

There is Felicia Langer, the German Communist lawyer, who compares Israel to the Nazi regime. There is the French Suzanne Weiss, who charged Israel with a “form of genocide”.

The first of this type of survivor was Shlomo Schmalzman, who in 1982, when the Israeli army entered Beirut to defeat the Arab terrorists, began a hunger strike at Yad Vashem. “I see Beirut and I remember Warsaw”, this survivor said, condemning his own people to the terrorists’ menace.

Many of these survivors are part of the International Solidarity Movement ISM), which during the Second Intifada did not hesitate to offer hospitality to one of the suicide bombers who blew up Mike’s Place, a popular club in the promenade of Tel Aviv. These Western boys and girls have been pictured with AK47 rifles of the Palestinian terrorists.

You also find Daniel Boyarin, who teaches at the University of California and leads the American academic campaign against Israel, a country which he thinks should be removed.

You have Renate Bridenthal, she teaches at Brooklyn College and wants the United States to interrupt military agreements with the Jewish State.

From Bard College you read the name of Joel Kovel, the author of “Overcoming Zionism”, where he states that the creation of Israel was a mistake.

It is the Daniel Finkelstein Syndrome, named after the author of the best selling book “The Industry of the Holocaust”. His father, Zacharias, was a survivor of Auschwitz. His mother, Maryla, was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek death camp. So Finkelstein is a typical “child of the Holocaust”. But this has not prevented him from working to exclude Israel from the family of nations.

In recent days, however, the anti-Israeli sentiment around the world was all agog because of Henk Zanoli. He is an elderly Dutchman, who until a few days ago was a “Righteous Among the Nations”. Zanoli has just returned the medal and asked for the removal of his name from the Yad Vashem list.

The reason? Israel’s war in Gaza.

Another perfect anti-Israel story for the Western press. Excerpt that in the Israeli bombing that killed four family members of the Ziadah-Zanoli family in Gaza, there was also Mohammed Maqadmeh, a senior member of the Hamas military wing. We do not know yet if Zanoli’s Arab family deliberately protected the terrorist or if they were used as human shields.

But we know for sure that a terrorist was in the house of the former "Righteous Among the Nations".

As you can see, the “Holocaust survivors against Israel” was a fake, the story of a few old haters of the Jewish people. But I understand why the Western press salivated at the story.

What’s more fascinating than a New York Times page with the names of  327 Shoah "survivors”, real or imagined - it does not matter - who have dedicated their lives to destroying the country where seventy percent of all Holocaust survivors live?

Anti-Semitism is amazing. Simply amazing.