{"id":52863,"date":"2025-05-06T14:51:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T22:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=52863"},"modified":"2025-05-06T14:51:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T22:51:30","slug":"on-pro-israel-use-and-abuse-of-holocaust-remembrance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/06\/on-pro-israel-use-and-abuse-of-holocaust-remembrance\/","title":{"rendered":"On Pro-Israel Use and Abuse of Holocaust Remembrance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Yves Engler\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Twenty-five years ago, Norman Finkelstein detailed how Hitler\u2019s destruction of European Jewry was weaponized against Palestinians. In his 2000 book The Holocaust Industry<\/em><\/a>: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering<\/em>, Finkelstein, whose grandparents perished in Nazi death camps, argued the US Jewish establishment exploited the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for economic and political gain and to further the interests of Israel. Since the book was written, Israel lobbyists\u2019 reliance on antisemitism\/Nazi Holocaust claims to undermine Palestine solidarity has grown substantially.<\/p>\n

As Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza, land theft in West Bank and violence across the region grows, supporters turn to evermore more distant Nazi crimes to defend the indefensible. A recent issue of the Montreal Gazette<\/em> highlights the city\u2019s \u201cHolocaust Industry\u201d.<\/p>\n

Across the top of the front of the April 23 paper there was a photo of a 98-year-old survivor of the Nazis next to concentration camp garb. The article headlined \u201cAntisemitism<\/a> begins with Jews, it doesn\u2019t end with Jews, Cotler says\u201d promoted Federation Combined Jewish Appeal\u2019s (CJA) \u201cRemembrance<\/a> to Celebration\u201d campaign, which also marks Israel\u2019s Memorial Day and Israel\u2019s Independence Day. Ostensibly about Nazi crimes, the article largely quoted leading Zionist Irwin Cotler justifying Israeli brutality. The initiator of Canada\u2019s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism was quoted saying, \u201cWe\u2019re also in the shadow and continuing pain of the unspeakable mass atrocities of Oct. 7, perpetrated, as you know, by a terrorist organization, Hamas, under Canadian law, but (also) an antisemitic genocidal terrorist group, not because I say so, but because Hamas has said so in its founding charter of 1988. And since Oct. 7, Hamas has committed itself \u2014 and I\u2019m quoting them again \u2014 to commit Oct. 7 again and again and again until Israel\u2019s annihilation\u2026 Iran is the sleeper, the elephant in the antisemitic room, where Iran is not only a leading state sponsor of international terrorism, including that of Hamas and Hezbollah, not only a leading exporter of transnational repression and assassination targeting Jews, but where Iran itself is a leading architect of what has come to be known \u2014 and I first called it as such 25 years ago \u2014 genocidal antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the opinion page of that day\u2019s paper the communications director of the Montreal Holocaust Museum (MHM) complained about groups backing away from partnerships with the museum amidst Israel\u2019s horrors. In the wildly contradictory \u201cAnti\u00adsemit\u00adism<\/a>, loss of ally\u00adship are con\u00adnec\u00adted\u201d Sarah Fogg noted, \u201cHolocaust museums do not have to pass a litmus test on the Middle East to do their crucial work\u2026 If a Holocaust museum\u2019s commemoration inspires individuals to publicly question where its Gaza exhibit is, this demonstration of solidarity with Palestinian civilians is clouded by an antisemitic trope. For the record, it is valid and perfectly reasonable for Canadian Jews to care about Israel, worry about the hostages and to define as Zionists, meaning they support the Jewish people\u2019s right to self-determination in their ancestral land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two days later the Gazette<\/em> reported on the MHM\/CJA holocaust event. The story included a photo of an old man holding a sign saying<\/a> \u201cWe will not be silent\u201d above Israeli and Canadian flags. The caption read, \u201cHolocaust survivor Andrew Fuchs, 89, attended a solemn Yom HaShoah event at the Montreal Holocaust Museum on Wednesday.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story quoted Cotler, Anthony Housefather, Neil Oberman and MHM president Jacques Saada, who compared Palestinians to Nazis. \u201cOne of<\/a> the phrases we use is \u2018never again,\u2019\u201d Saada told the crowd. \u201cUnfortunately, on Oct. 7, 2023, it was the Holocaust all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past year and a half Saada has repeatedly used Holocaust commemoration events to promote Israel\u2019s genocide. In a speech to the Montreal Mayor\u2019s Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony last year Saada declared: \u201cWe live<\/a> in an upside down world\u2026 A world where women sing the praises of Hamas, while it wants to enslave them. A world where members of the LGBTQ communities sing the praises of Hamas, while in Gaza it sentences them to death\u2026 All this is also happening in the streets and on the campuses of Montreal. A world where university professors treat their Jewish students as prostitutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past eighteen months Saada has opposed a ceasefire in Gaza and has attended Israel rallies and events. When South Africa brought a case against Israel\u2019s genocide to the International Court of Justice, Saada signed a message on behalf of the MHM labeling the legal effort a \u201crevolting accusation<\/a>\u201d akin to \u201cthe Protocols of the Elders of Zion.\u201d Saada claimed, \u201cThe current war is the result of a pogrom deliberately carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians. This pogrom directly meets the definition of genocide. Hamas makes no secret of its intent, its genocidal goals, even in its charter.\u201d<\/p>\n

After over 10,000<\/a> Palestinians had been killed in the latest round of Israeli barbarism directed at the besieged coastal strip, MHM released their position \u201con the continuing<\/a> conflict in Israel\u201d. The November 15 statement noted: \u201cWe have seen the worst terrorist attack committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, an escalating war in a place that many of us call a second home, images of extreme violence, the proliferation of hate propaganda, and the terrorizing of Jews around the world. We share the pain of the Israeli and Palestinian families, equally victimized by the cruelty of Hamas. We are heartbroken thinking of the innocent hostages being held by these ISIS emulators, and we pray for their immediate release back to the loving arms of their Israeli families.\u201d<\/p>\n

The MHM works with the English Montreal School Board (EMSB) to promote its Holocaust Education Program. They and other pro-Israel forces convinced the EMSB to make holocaust education mandatory. As part of the EMSB\u2019s holocaust education program prominent Nazi hunter Steven Rambam told Westmount high school students in January 2023 that people say \u201cIsrael<\/a> is a terrible country, [that] they\u2019re abusing the Palestinians \u2013 which is a bunch of crap. I lived in Israel. Trust me they\u2019re doing everything but<\/em> abusing the Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

EMSB\u2019s holocaust education program was set up<\/a> in conjunction with the Azrieli Foundation. The Azrieli Foundation has also been a major financier of the MHM and the lead private donor for its $120 million<\/a> move and upgrade to a large new centrally located facility. (Federal, municipal and provincial governments have given tens of millions of dollars in grants \u2014 while subsidizing tens of millions of dollars more through donations to charities \u2014 to the MHM expansion.)<\/p>\n

Worth more than $3 billion<\/a> prior to his death, David Azrieli served in the paramilitary Haganah<\/a> group during the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. His unit was responsible for the Battle of Jerusalem, including forcibly displacing 10,000 Palestinians.<\/a> A Montrealer who also owned property in Israel, Azrieli paid for an amphitheatre to be built in the occupied Golan Heights to commemorate his Haganah brigade and made a controversial donation to Im Tirtzu, which an Israeli court deemed a \u201cfascist<\/a>\u201d group. In 2011 Azrieli gave Concordia University $5 million to establish the first minor in Israel Studies at a Canadian university. After attending an Association for Israel Studies\u2019 conference organized by the Azrieli Institute, prominent anti-Palestinian activist Gerald Steinberg described the institute as part of a \u201ccounterattack<\/a>\u201d against pro-Palestinian activism at Concordia.<\/p>\n

The MHM has many ties to Montreal\u2019s main apartheid and genocide lobby organizations. The museum lists Federation CJA as its \u201cBeneficiary<\/a>\u201d and has co-sponsored initiatives<\/a> with B\u2019nai Brith<\/a>, Centre for<\/a> Israel and Jewish Affairs and other anti-Palestinian groups.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the use and abuse of holocaust remembrance dates back primarily to 1967, not to the time Nazis were in power or once the death camps were liberated. Finkelstein shows how discussion of the Nazi Holocaust grew exponentially after the June 1967 Six Day war. Prior to that war, which provided a decisive service to US geopolitical aims in the Middle East, the genocide of European Jewry was a topic largely relegated to private forums and among left wing intellectuals. Paralleling the US, the Nazi Holocaust was not widely discussed in Canada in the two decades after World War II. In fact, the Canadian Jewish Congress consciously avoided the subject.<\/p>\n

Numerous other commentators also trace the established Jewish community\u2019s interest in Nazi crimes to the Six Day War. \u201cThe 1967 war,\u201d explained Professor Cyril Leavitt, \u201calarmed Canadian Jews. Increasingly, the Holocaust was invoked as a reminder of the need to support the Jewish state.\u201d President of the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre, Sam Rothstein concurred. \u201cThe 1967 war\u2026 was the one development that led to a commitment by community organizations to become more involved in Holocaust commemoration\u2026 Stephen Cummings, the founder of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center, said that \u2018consciousness [of the Holocaust] has changed. Jews are much more proud, and that\u2019s a post-1967 [phenomenon]. It was the event that gave Jews around the world confidence.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Holocaust memorials proliferated after Israel smashed Egyptian-led pan-Arabism in six days of fighting. Nearly three decades after World War II, in 1972, the Canadian Jewish Congress and its local federations began to establish standing committees on the Nazi Holocaust. The first Canadian Holocaust memorial was established in Montreal in 1977.<\/p>\n

Over the past 50 years a slew of holocaust museums and monuments have been established across the country. Canada now has a Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism and many institutions and governments have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance\u2019s (IHRA) anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism.<\/p>\n

The lesson? Knowledge production and dissemination is not apolitical. Even if it makes many uncomfortable, it\u2019s imperative to challenge a \u201cholocaust industry\u201d enabling genocide and apartheid.<\/p>\n

Support Yves\u2019 work. Donate Now.<\/a><\/p>\n

Yves Engler is the author of <\/em>Stand on Guard for Whom? <\/em>A People\u2019s History of the Canadian Military<\/a> and twelve other books<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Yves Engler\u2019s website. Twenty-five years ago, Norman Finkelstein detailed how Hitler\u2019s destruction of European Jewry was weaponized against Palestinians. In his 2000 book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Finkelstein, whose grandparents perished in Nazi death camps, argued the US Jewish establishment exploited the memory of the Nazi Holocaust […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1315],"class_list":["post-52863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52863"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52868,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52863\/revisions\/52868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52863"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=52863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}