We must remember all victims of the Nazis
CAMDEN NEW JOURNAL – Letters
30 January, 2020
http://camdennewjournal.com/article/we-must-remember-all-victims-of-the-nazis
We must remember all victims of the Nazis
• WE remembered the victims and survivors on this 75th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation, including those currently persecuted, as Gareth Murphy’s letter said (Remember the Gypsy and Roma victims, January 23).
There seemed little space for Israel to mention those who died shoulder to shoulder with Jewish victims. In concentration camps, slave labour and death-camps, we all resisted and we all died: Jewish people, Roma, Soviet people, Poles, people with disabilities, gay people, Jehovah’s Witnesses.
It’s still Tory policy to criminalise Traveller communities, and to refuse to reunite child refugees with their families. And only a few weeks ago Theresa May and Boris Johnson unveiled a statue to Nancy Astor: anti-Catholic, antisemitic and a Nazi sympathiser.
It seems that supporters of Israeli apartheid are selective about the antisemitism and anti-Nazism they object to; Nancy Astor is ok, so are the antisemitic Donald Trump and Victor Orban, dear friends of Israel.
On the other hand, Corbyn, as his sons said, “endured the most despicable attacks filled with hatred”. Corbyn and the Labour movement were relentlessly accused of even imaginary antisemitism – tropes – including by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the self-appointed “voice of British Jewry”; and the tiny Jewish Labour Movement which refused to campaign for the Labour Party it’s affiliated to (astonishingly, you don’t have to be Jewish or a Labour Party member to join!).
Labour’s popular manifesto including its ethical foreign policy was never mentioned, as though the only thing Labour stood for was antisemitism.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) are investigating possible war crimes by Israel against Palestinian people: in response Netanyahu has accused the ICC of antisemitism!
Let’s commemorate next January 27 Genocide Memorial Day, by building a movement to protect all communities facing genocide and mass murder and repression: Never Again – for Anyone.
SELMA JAMES,
MICHAEL KALMANOVITZ
International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network UK