Ronan L Tynan

As I recoiled with shock and revulsion at the indiscriminate murder of civilians especially women and children in Gaza, no where more so than in its poorest and most densely populated neighborhood of Shejayia where bodies were left strewn in the streets by the Israeli military, I discovered this very moving clip from Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer: perhaps the most devastating criticism of the kind of Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu represents.

When a human rights activists or even a Palestinian victim of one of the world’s most powerful armies compares Israeli actions to the Nazis, there is always a lingering, even an unconscious sense of complicity with the perpetrators of the Holocaust. However, when an Auschwitz survivors, a man of integrity, deeply proud of his Jewish heritage does so, it is painfully clear that Netanyahu has not only gone too far, but has betrayed everything Hajo Meyer believes Israel should stand for.

Claiming the Israelis treat the Palestinians like “vermin,” and very upset at the way one Israeli general described the Palestinians as “a cancerous growth’ – because it is the same way the Nazis spoke about him as “a boy in Germany”.

“When the Nazis gassed the Jews the world was silent,” and now when Israel persecutes the Palestinians and “steals away their land the world is silent, and I want to want to awake the world,” he said.

Hajo Meyer went on: “Any criticism on the policy of Israel is hampered and made impossible by a terrible trick and crime of Israeli propaganda, that any criticism on the politics of Israel comes out or is induced by anti-Semitic feelings. And our main purpose is to show to the world that we are Jews, we are conscious Jews, and we want to show that you must criticize Israel if you ..want anything at all good for the Jews in the world. Because what Israel is doing is destroying the Jewish world and the Jewish heritage”.

Obviously a lot of Jewish people agree with Hajo Meyer given the numbers that are visible at demonstrations against Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza in all parts of the world.

Ronan L Tynan

Twitter: @RonanLTynan