The following letter was sent to the Irish Times on 16 January. The paper declined to print it. We have reproduced it below with permission from Jews for Palestine-Ireland.
Sir,
We agree with Oliver Sears of Holocaust Awareness Ireland that Holocaust Memorial Day is a “sombre, precious and inviolable” commemoration (IT 15.1.25 Holocaust Memorial Organisers Defend the Decision to invite Michael D Higgins to speak).
But the Nazi Holocaust should not be made an exception, as though Jewish suffering matters more than the suffering of others. This Holocaust Memorial Day should not be marked without acknowledging the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and state-sanctioned violence in the West Bank.
Over 46,000 Palestinians have been killed over the last 15 months. Most of them women and children. Palestinians have endured the world’s first live-streamed genocide, a collective punishment including weaponised starvation, and ethnic cleansing on a massive scale – all to safeguard what Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem describe as “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea”.
Oliver Sears, Maurice Cohen, and Rabbi Wieder do not speak for the many anti-Zionist Jews in Ireland when they object to the President making a keynote speech to commemorate the Holocaust. They do not speak for us when they object to Ireland’s recognition of the state of Palestine, or Ireland’s intervention in support of South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice.
They clearly do not understand the brutal legacy of British colonialism on the island of Ireland, the same British colonialism that created and championed the rogue state that Israel has become.
When our children and grandchildren ask what we did as Jewish people to stop this genocide, we will explain that the horrors of the European Holocaust, and our history, demand that we take a stand. Our history must never be used to justify inequality, cruelty and genocide. Our history demands that we stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Palestine.
Never Again is Now.
Annie de Bhal
Jonathan Sugarman
Sue Pentel
Jews for Palestine-Ireland
