by Rikki Zagelbaum in the Jewish News Syndicate
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a member of the progressive “Squad” in Congress, condemned on Oct. 7, 2023, “the horrific acts we are seeing unfold today in Israel against children, women, the elderly and the unarmed people who are being slaughtered and taken hostage by Hamas.” She added that the “senseless violence” would only continue a cycle of violence and called, even before the Jewish state had defended itself, for “de-escalation and ceasefire.”
On Jan. 27, Omar, who has often criticized Israel in antisemitic terms, wrote that “on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we honor the 6 million Jews and millions of other people murdered during the Holocaust and carry the stories of survivors who showed strength in the darkest of times.” She added that “we must recommit to fighting against antisemitism and bigotry in all forms. Never again.”
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Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told JNS that “antisemites are quick to condemn the previously-accepted facades of Jew-hatred, while simultaneously promoting the same underlying lies in new forms.”
“The more hateful their rhetoric, the more they are anxious to prove they aren’t actually hateful,” Menken said. “When support for Hamas is so blatant and barbaric, they need political cover more than ever.”
It’s not new for those, who have denounced Israel, to portray themselves falsely as allies to Jews, according to Deborah Lipstadt, a historian, Emory University professor and former U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism. “But it is much more pronounced since Oct. 7,” Lipstadt told JNS.
Omar, who referred to some Jewish students at Columbia University as “pro-genocide” in April, is one of several public figures and groups Jewish leaders accuse of hypocrisy for what are say were insincere Holocaust tributes on the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation.
Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing British parliamentarian who has long drawn criticism for antisemitic statements, marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on social media with a post stating that “fascism doesn’t arrive in uniform overnight. It arrives with suited politicians, one piece of legislation—or executive order—at a time.”
Amnesty International, which released a nearly 300-page report last month accusing Israel of “genocide,” stated on Monday that “Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. The genocide of the Jewish people, Roma and other minorities during World War II is a brutal reminder of what hatred and prejudice can lead to.”
“From what I’ve seen, figures like Rep. Omar do this every year, while others, like Rep. Tlaib, don’t put out anything at all,” said Sam Markstein, national political director at the Republican Jewish Coalition.
“This isn’t new or surprising,” Markstein told JNS. “It’s sad, pathetic and outrageous in and of itself, but is particularly galling that they continue to do it given what has happened over the last 15-plus months.”
The International Criminal Court in The Hague, a stand-alone body not affiliated with the United Nations, issued arrest warrants in November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the ICC issued a statement referring to “the tragedy suffered by the victims of the Holocaust” and “the victims of atrocities” without mentioning “Jews.”
Brandy Shufutinsky, director of education and community engagement at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, told JNS that some fail to acknowledge Jewish suffering because it doesn’t align with their framework of oppressors and oppressed.
“We’ve seen the universalism of Jewish identity and experiences in recent years,” Shufutinsky told JNS. “This is especially prevalent in spaces where Jewish suffering has been minimized because of the acceptance of the oppressor-oppressed binary.”
Those who tore down hostage posters after Oct. 7 “couldn’t accept that Jewish people could be victims and that Palestinian Arabs could be perpetrators because that would go against the very foundation of the oppressor-oppressed narrative,” she said. “This mindset holds that those with real or perceived success are always the bad guy and those without power can never persecute others.”
Shoshana Bryen, senior director at the Jewish Policy Center, told JNS that “there have been quite a number of people who mentioned Auschwitz, Holocaust, genocide, etcetera, without saying the word ‘Jews’ at all.”
“They substitute ‘humanity’ or ‘people,’” she said. “I’m not sure which is more aggravating.”
Social-media activist Lizzy Savetsky was at the United Nations on Monday when Israeli President Isaac Herzog slammed the global body for “hypocrisy” and “moral bankruptcy” in an address at the General Assembly’s annual special session on Holocaust remembrance.
“The phrase ‘never again’ is not merely a slogan,” according to Savetsky, who recently received the Voice of Iron award at the Knesset. “It is a solemn call to action.”
“We witness institutions like the United Nations straying from their founding principles by providing platforms to speakers who deny Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism,” Savetsky told JNS. “This double standard is unacceptable. We must remain vigilant and proactive in combating antisemitism and ensuring that ‘never again’ truly means never again.”
Arsen Ostrovsky, a human-rights attorney, CEO of the International Legal Forum and a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security, told JNS that “every Holocaust Remembrance Day, we have become accustomed to many leaders and lawmakers making eloquent statements about the importance of ‘never again,’ when for 364 other days of the year, they only stoke antisemitism and engage in relentless vilification of Israel or minimizing Hamas crimes and the Oct. 7 massacre.”
“For these individuals, ‘never again’ is an empty slogan, a cliché,” Ostrovsky said. “They only demean the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust by using it as a facade to masquerade their own innate antisemitism.”
“Perhaps, it would be better had they said nothing at all,” he said.
photo credit:
Photo credit: Ilhan Omar by Lorie Shaull, with CC BY-SA 4.0 license on Wikimedia.