“Holocaust can’t be used to justify war,” says SA Jews for a Free Palestine

South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) say the victimisation of Jews during the Holocaust cannot be used as justification for the oppression of the Palestinian people.

They were speaking at the Holocaust Remembrance Day yesterday, which was held in honour of the more than six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War.

And as war presses on between Israel and Hamas along the Gaza Strip, the SAJFP say the atrocities of the Holocaust cannot be repeated. Since October 7th, more than 34 000 people have lost their lives in the Palestinian territory following Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’s deadly attack, when Hamas fighters stormed communities along Israel’s southern fence with Gaza.

SAJFP say what’s happening in Gaza is genocide because of the level and pace of the killings, destruction, famine and the sweeping dehumanisation of the Palestinian people.

Speaking with YNews, the SAJFP’s Maya Schkolne says the atrocities of the Holocaust should not be framed as more significant than the painful histories of other people across the world.

“We see the Holocaust as a world historic event of racism and oppression that forms part of a technology of oppression after the Holocaust, after what happened in Rwanda, you would have thought that the world would have learnt its lesson,” says Schkolne.

In 1994, the Rwandan Civil War saw at least 800 000 Tutsis lose their lives in a mass murder campaign by Hutu extremists.

Schkolne says she and her team are fighting hard to undo Israel’s attempts to justify its current actions in the Gaza Strip by using the Holocaust.

“So, the point is perhaps a purposeful exercise to link this painful history of the Holocaust to the state of Israel, which largely justifies itself by claiming that the historical experiences of Jews are one of unique oppression and that Jews are unsafe in the world unless they have this state of their own,” Schkolne told YNews.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minsiter Benjamin Netanyahu says no amount of international pressure will stop Israel from defending itself.

He says if Israel is forced to stand alone, it will. Written by Naomi Kobbie