This weekend marks 82 years since 15 top German leaders, comprising high-ranking Nazi Party members and German government officials, were invited by SS general Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Reich Security Main Office, to Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin. What was the purpose of this prestigious gathering?
It was to seek the full cooperation of all government departments in the accomplishment of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The attention to detail was amazing. The main thrust was not to leave one Jew alive throughout Europe. As these German leaders sat around the table – in this aesthetically beautiful place – eating and drinking, they planned the barbaric elimination of the Jewish people.
These thoughts came to mind as I watched recent interviews on international TV stations. It seems incomprehensible that at the time of the most heinous attack on Israeli men, women, and children – reminiscent of the Holocaust – that far too many TV channels are willing, even anxious, to give space to individuals who are bent on eliminating the horrors of October 7 and replacing them with the concept that Israel’s prime purpose in entering Gaza was to kill as many civilians as possible.
What has shaken me the most is the speed with which the massacre of October 7 has been eroded from the minds of the many and in its place we – who were slaughtered – are being accused of creating a holocaust in Gaza. At The Hague International Court of Justice, South Africa accuses Israel of carrying out a genocide with no mention of the IDF being the only army in the world to give warnings to the civilian population of an imminent airstrike. No mention of the corridors created by the IDF to enable the civilian population to find safety elsewhere. No mention of Hamas which uses its civilian population as human shields.
Col. Richard Kemp, a former British Army colonel, who commanded British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, has praised Israel on numerous occasions for the manner in which it endeavors to prevent civilian casualties. Tragically, in war, people are killed and mistakes are made; one disturbing statistic is that 17% of our own soldiers have been killed by friendly fire.
HOW IS the foreign media treating Israel? The BBC is justifiably accused of being hostile to Israel; the UK’s Sky News can compete with the BBC in its negative false projection of Israel. Watching Sky’s Samantha Washington interview Israel’s Gideon Levy (journalist for Ha’aretz) is a prime example. Levy’s emphasis was on how the IDF was murdering innocent civilians in Gaza without any sense of guilt. He went on to ask how long Israel would continue to receive support from the West, stating “Israel supports war.”
The interviewer then asked him how he felt about an 18-year-old who is refusing to join the IDF because he believes it is an immoral army. Levy responded by saying he understood this young man’s decision; following which, Levy was asked if there were many who refused to enter the IDF on so-called moral grounds... Levy’s response was in the negative because, he said, Israelis are militaristic.
At no point did the interviewer even mention what happened on October 7; Levy did, as a throwaway line, saying that Israel had a right to respond, although the scale of the response was unacceptable. During the entire interview, no mention was made of the magnitude of Hamas’s slaughter of our men, women, and children and how they were raped, burned alive, beheaded.
One wonders whether either Levy or Washington had seen the footage of the horrors perpetuated by Hamas taken by the terrorists who carried out this heinous act or the celebrations that followed in Gaza. Levy’s further claim that the IDF had murdered 162 babies was called libelous by CAMERA UK, the committee for accuracy in Middle East reporting. Washington commented on the fact that she had interviewed a number of IDF spokespersons who expressed views somewhat different from those of Levy, whose comments she referred to as “nuanced.”
AND THEN there was the recent interview with Masha Gessen shown on Amanpour and Company’s TV program via PBS. Gessen is a Jewish Russian-American journalist, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, who writes for The New Yorker. The catalyst for this interview was Gessen’s recently published article titled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust.” The article compares the IDF’s actions in Gaza to the Nazi-run ghettos in Eastern Europe. Gessen stated that the Holocaust is being used to turn Israel into the “forever victim.”
She attributes partial responsibility to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) – adopted by 34 countries worldwide – believing this to be an excuse to allow Israel to carry out racist acts. Specifically, she talks about what is happening in Gaza, viewing the IDF as akin to the Nazis. Again not a mention of what happened on October 7. She spoke of an anti-antisemitism bureaucracy – initiated in Germany and connected to the definition of the IHRA – which prevents any criticism of Israel and its comparison to the Nazis.
As far as Israel’s enemies are concerned, what could be better than the daughter of a Holocaust survivor making such claims? Gessen draws a line between those of us who live in Israel and the Jews in the Diaspora – clearly against the concept of Diaspora Jews identifying with Israel.
Back to the beginning. As we recall the infamous gathering in Wannsee on January 20, 1942 – specifically to plan the elimination of European Jewry – it seems incomprehensible that today the Holocaust is utilized to create more Jew-hatred.
A particularly disturbing consequence is that there are Jews who are willingly part of this anti- Israel, Jew-bashing campaign. Perhaps they have forgotten that Hitler did not distinguish between one Jew and another, irrespective of their political or religious identification.
The writer is chairperson of Israel, Britain, and the Commonwealth Association.