Group's head Tweets: “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews.”
By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENTMavi Marmara 311(photo credit: Stringer Turkey / Reuters)
The US head of the pro-Palestinian group The Free Gaza Movement unleashed a wave of criticism over the last several days because of a Twitter post asserting that Zionists ran concentration camps and murdered Jews.Greta Berlin, the American co-founder of the group Free Gaza, tweeted on September 30 “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews.”Berlin’s tweet blaming Zionists for the Holocaust caught the eye of Avi Mayer, who oversees social media for the Jewish Agency for Israel. Mayer was the first to draw attention to Berlin on his Twitter feed, writing “the folks behind the #Gaza flotilla – reveal themselves to be the lowest anti- Semites.” Mayer documented the chronology of Berlin’s attacks on Jews and Israel, as well as the Holocaust revisionism of the Free Gaza group.Mayer wrote in a blog post, “The Free Gaza Movement is the key actor behind the successive flotillas that have sought to violate the maritime closure around Gaza in support of Hamas. It is chaired by Huwaida Arraf, who also heads the International Solidarity Movement (and has endorsed the use of violence against Israel), and its Board of Advisers includes such luminaries as Naomi Klein, Peter Hansen, and Jenny Tonge.”He continued, “It has been endorsed by a range of organizations and individuals, including Desmond Tutu, Jewish Voice for Peace, Code Pink, the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the Rachel Corrie Foundation, George Galloway and Natorei Karta International.”Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the head of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, said “The NGO activists in the so-called ‘Free Gaza’ campaign have always reflected obsessive, irrational and immoral characteristics, and the revelation of links to crude anti-Semitism provides additional evidence,” in an email to The Jerusalem Post.“The members of organizations like the ISM [International Solidarity Movement] and others behind Free Gaza, that lead the political war to demonize Israel and give support to terror groups, have been unmasked in an entirely unambiguous manner,” he said. “Their facade of human rights and humanitarian aid, which was never supported by had any tangible evidence, has completely disintegrated.”According to an article in Canada’s National Post, Berlin said the offending tweet was meant for her private Facebook account and was mistakenly sent from the Free Gaza Twitter account. The Canadian daily reported that a tweet from Free Gaza quoted her as saying, “I shared it without watching it. I am sorry that I just sent it forward without looking at it. It won’t happen again.”Berlin linked her tweet to a video ostensibly from conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins, who propagates the views that Jews are responsible for the Holocaust and are admirers of Hitler.Mayer wrote that “This video, endorsed and promoted by @FreeGazaOrg, claims Jews want to erect a statue of Hitler in Israel to thank him” and that the person speaking in the video “appears to be the late anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins.”
Berlin and her organization, the Free Gaza Movement, are linked to radical Islamist organizations and seek, according to critics, to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.Berlin is currently on a book tour in Canada for co-writing Freedom Sailors: The Maiden Voyage of the Free Gaza movement and how we succeeded in spite of ourselves.
