Our collective complicity and shame over Gaza is rooted in the Holocaust

Seeing the brutal Israeli war in Gaza continuing to unfold, I feel deeply ashamed on many levels as the Zionist State sinks deeper into the pits of Hellish behaviour and inhumanity. Like millions of others around the world, I fear that I may become inured to the suffering of the Palestinians who face unimaginable cruelty and pain every hour of every day.

Conscious that I may be accused of anti-Semitism, I admit that I have deliberately chosen to aim my words at the so-called Israel Defence Forces. The IDF is an easy target because it is reprehensible in all that it does, not least the lies that tumble so easily from the mouths of its spokesmen feeding pro-Israel stooges around the world who try to justify the unjustifiable.

Last month, just before I embarked on my general election campaign — I stood as an independent in Newcastle Central and West constituency — the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) reported me to one of the more right-wing national newspapers for drawing parallels between the behaviour of the Israeli military and the appalling crimes of the Nazi Third Reich. Apparently, such comparisons are “anti-Semitic” and offensive to Jewish people who are still traumatised by the Holocaust. So traumatised, it seems, that only by trying to ruin my political ambitions will they be satiated. As an independent politician, they couldn’t get me sacked from any party, but that hasn’t stopped some pro-Israel Jewish groups from doing their utmost to get me cancelled and no-platformed at various events.

In its attempt to define anti-Semitism, the World Jewish Congress opines: “Any alleged wrongdoings on Israel’s part cannot be compared to Nazi crimes during the Holocaust. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is a territorial and political one, whereas the Holocaust was the attempt to systematically annihilate European Jewry. Despite the unfortunate outbreak of violence during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Palestinian population has grown by all metrics, and is projected to continue doing so. To compare this to the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust is preposterous and diminishes the pain of those who have suffered during the conflict.”

The Congress continues: “Comparing the creation of the State of Israel to the systematic extermination of the Jews is at best inaccurate and deeply offensive to Jews around the world.”

I’m not disputing that some Jews may be deeply offended, but I am deeply offended and traumatised by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

And if there really is a hierarchy in taking offence, I humbly suggest that the Palestinians in Gaza have every right to be more offended and traumatised than the millions watching a genocide unfold in real time in Gaza today, almost eighty years after the world said, “Never again.”

READ: ‘Humanitarian situation in Gaza is a moral stain on us all’: UN chief

To put it bluntly, I’m fed up with Israelis playing the victim card. There. I’ve said it. And it needs to be said. It needs to be written and read. And it needs to be repeated again and again and again until every single Israeli stands up and protests against the genocide taking place on their doorstep and in their name.

The silence of world Jewry is also deafening, which doesn’t fit well with the memories of the Holocaust preserved so vividly among survivors and their descendants. Those Jews who do stand up and denounce what Israel is doing to the Palestinians are dismissed as “minority voices” and that old fabrication, “self-hating”. In the name of common decency and humanity, it would be reassuring to hear more Jews condemning genocide, even when fellow Jews and their gentile supporters are behind it.

I refuse to be guilt-tripped into silence any longer. I refuse to tiptoe around the sensibilities of people who are so hard-hearted that they cannot shed a tear or show an ounce of sympathy for the starving, skeletal babies rasping their final breaths in Gaza because Israel and its far-right leaders have weaponised starvation. Imposing famine conditions on people is illegal, yet that is exactly what Israel is doing with the support of its closest allies in the West. The skeletal figures that haunted me as a child watching grim black and white Holocaust documentaries are returning in full colour more vivid than ever.

I can already see the CAA writing to my editor to get me sacked for this article. I will no doubt be called a radical and extremist who has been brainwashed by “Jew haters”. Have I been radicalised? Yes, but the people who’ve brought me to this point are Jews themselves. Check out @torahjews account on X. The New York-based community of ultra-Orthodox Jews is anti-Zionist and very close to their faith. They are the antithesis of Zionist Jews behind the state of Israel for whom Judaism is there to be used and abused to fulfil Zionism’s racist agenda.

Think also of brave, knowledgeable Jews like Norman Finkelstein who has no time for those who produce “crocodile tears” while “playing the Holocaust card”, as this memorable video shows. “If you had any heart in you, you would cry for the Palestinians,” he raged at a Jewish student who mentioned the “offence” she felt because of those “who suffered in the Nazi war.”

Finkelstein is not alone as a Jew standing up for justice, as this equally memorable speech by former Zionist the late Gerald Kaufman also illustrates. Like Finkelstein, most of his Polish family members were also murdered by the Nazis.

In a brief but poignant history lesson in Westminster, the much-loved Jewish MP also accused the Israeli government of ruthlessly exploiting the Holocaust. Rather prophetically he accused it of “war crimes” and pointed out the double standards of its treatment of the Palestinians.

“My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza,” said Kaufman. “The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious but the lives of Palestinians do not count.”

I have no doubt that Kaufman would have been disgusted by the death of young Mohammad Bhar.

The murder of the autistic, Down syndrome Palestinian, who was just 24, could have come straight from a Nazi “How to…” textbook.

Children and young people living with autism, Down syndrome or other disabilities were among the first killed by the Nazi regime. In assisting their murders, German medics handed Hitler’s men a model that could be applied for the “darkness” of the ensuing Holocaust, according to a book review on the Nazi persecution of the disabled.

Israeli soldiers set a dog on Mohammad which mauled his hand and chest, even as he patted the dog’s head saying, “That’s enough my dear.” He was left to bleed to death when his family was herded out of the house and prevented from helping him. His decomposing body was only retrieved a week later, and buried in the alley next to his home because it was still too dangerous for a proper burial to take place. Do the CAA staff have any tears for this victim of Israeli brutality, or are they too busy preparing another complaint about me drawing parallels between Israel and the Nazis?

To its eternal shame, the BBC was incapable of bringing this horrific story to world attention until it had been sanitised. The so-called “national broadcaster” didn’t dare to name the perpetrator of this barbaric war crime, or even describe what happened to Mohammad. I believe this was because Mohammad was a Palestinian Arab. Had he been from Ukraine, for example, and a victim of Russian cruelty, the story would have been headlining 24/7.

The BBC’s censored story initially ran with the incredulous headline “The lonely death of Gaza man with Down’s syndrome”, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Mohammad Bhar was left to die by the Israeli army after being savaged by one of its combat dogs. After universal outrage over the report, iconic veteran Irish journalist Fergal Keane was brought in to repair the damage, but the brutality of the attack was not mentioned until the 16th paragraph. I cannot imagine that Keane, known for his fearless reporting, was too happy about this.

I wonder what excuse Telegraph columnist Zoe Strimpel will come up with to whitewash the killing of an autistic Down syndrome Palestinian? Over to you Zoe.

Sadly, this is the world we live in.

It’s a world where journalists like me are attacked for drawing blindingly obvious parallels between 20th century Nazi Germany and the 21st century Israel Defence Forces. A world where acres of newsprint and headlines are devoted to a scratch on ex-President Donald Trump’s right ear, but largely ignores the murder of Hind Rajab, the six-year-old child in the Gaza Strip whose killing, along with six family members and two paramedics trying to rescue her, was documented by investigative and forensic journalists but was barely touched by mainstream media.

Until journalists are allowed to report the truth in full, we will have to rely on the heroic eyewitness accounts from our Palestinian colleagues on the ground. Which answers the question of why the “most moral” army in the world is so intent on killing journalists. At least 160 have been killed in Gaza since October last year. And don’t forget those, like Yaser Murtaja in 2018 and Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022, killed almost as a matter of routine well before the latest military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza. This story didn’t begin on 7 October, 2023.

Another apologist for the Israeli military is Charles Lipson, a Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Programme on International Politics, Economics and Security. According to him (yes, he’s another Telegraph writer), Hamas is to blame for the destruction of all of Gaza’s hospitals — every last one of them — and most likely the 500 medics who’ve been killed as well.

“Hamas uses hospitals like this for three reasons,” wrote Lipson. “The terrorist organisation knows that Israel has serious moral reservations about attacking civilian facilities and risking harm to innocents, a reservation not shared by Hamas militants willing to use their own people as human shields. Hospital traffic is also the perfect place to conceal the movement of terrorists and their supplies, a fact often excluded from debates over Israeli strategy. Resultantly, when the IDF launches strategic strikes, they pay a huge price in public opinion.”

Yes, you read that correctly: “Serious moral reservations about attacking civilian facilities and risking harm to innocents…” I’m not sure what bubble Lipson inhabits, but how does he explain away the routine murder of so many doctors and surgeons, highly respected men and women whose job it is to save lives? How does he explain the numerous TikTok videos of Israeli soldiers raking through and wearing the underclothes of Palestinian women they’ve probably just killed? Or why they fired 335 bullets into the Kia car where Hind was hiding the day she called the Red Crescent for help. Listen to this recording; it’s heart-breaking.

And what about the skeletal babies and those left to die in their incubators by Israeli soldiers, Prof. Lipson and Ms Strimpel?

Do you deny that the “most moral” army in the world has destroyed civilian infrastructure to the point that it basically no longer exists in in Gaza, and is using starvation as a weapon of war?

Anglo-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke is credited with saying: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing.” But the truth is it’s not just the silence of the good men and women of Israel to blame for the atrocities in Gaza today; their friends and family in the Israeli military are to blame. As are those in the West who justify such atrocities with the claim about Israel’s “right to self-defence”, which is non-existent as an occupying power oppressing the people living under occupation.

I refuse to be complicit in Israel’s genocide, so I will not keep quiet. The likes of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism can go to Hell in a handcart as far as I’m concerned. I will use my last breath to call out the evils of Zionism and the Zionist State. And I beg my fellow human beings in Israel and elsewhere to do the same. Silence is not an option, unless you want to be complicit in Israel’s heinous war crimes.