Israeli Arab Lawmaker Refuses Holocaust-Day Invite, Saying Israel Today Is Like Germany in 1930s

Israeli lawmaker Haneen Zoabi declined to participate in a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, citing her inability to speak out against what she called the “frightening similarity” between Nazi Germany’s behavior and Israel’s policies in the occupied territories.

Jonathan Lis and Almog Ben Zikri wrote at Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

Zoabi said she respects the memory of those killed in the Holocaust, but objects to the way Israel teaches the Holocaust to future generations.   “How can you teach the lessons of the Holocaust when you don’t discern the frightening similarity between what is happening today all around us and what happened in Germany in the 1930s?” she wrote the organizers.   “The Holocaust obligates us not to be silent when racist laws are legislated, not to be silent when natives are exiled, not to be silent when their land and property is stolen, not to be silent when entire neighborhoods and entire families are bombed and wiped off the face of the earth, and not to be silent when political activists are put in administrative detention. It obligates us to raise a loud outcry. But from the Jewish side of our reality, all that is heard is a weak voice, along with the silenced Palestinian voice.”

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—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.