Response to the Holocaust Centre’s dusty old rhetoric

The Jewish community in NZ needs protecting from antisemitism

What kind of Holocaust Centre cannot stand with others to stop all the slaughter? Why can its director not join us in condemning all the hatred that licenses ethnic violence?

The NZ Holocaust Centre has chosen to dedicate itself to the particular – to one community’s losses – rather than joining others to stop all genocidal crimes. Such an institution forfeits its relevance. It becomes (in the sterile, dustiest sense of the word) merely a museum. The present-tense mandate to stop genocidal crimes in progress, to rescue those still alive and judge those accused of the genocide, falls to civil society. And we accept.

The Holocaust Centre director is unable or unwilling to distinguish ‘Jewish’ from Israel, or protest from antisemitism. These are dusty museum pieces of rhetoric; evidence of (to borrow the director’s word) lazy thinking.

It is not antisemitic to object to crimes that happen to be committed by Jews. If I get a parking ticket, that is an offense committed by a Jew. It does not make the traffic warden antisemitic.

There is racism, and then there is protest speech which upholds the full and unequivocal rights of Palestinians among all people. The organisations which lead protest in Aotearoa have stated and restated that antisemitism is not welcome. In addition to being harmful in itself, anti-Jewish racism misdirects action and leaves the actual underpinnings of Israel’s illegal occupation and plausible genocide intact.

Per the standard Zionist formulation, the only reason to protest Israel’s genocidal violence is an anti-Jewish pathology. Nonsense: there is plenty of reason to be angry and the Holocaust Centre should be standing with us in our outrage; standing up against both racism and genocide.

To the Holocaust Centre,

We who protest do not hold you responsible for Israel’s actions. We distinguish Jewish from Israel. We hold you responsible for your silence in the face of the heinous crimes your institution exists to memorialise. You forfeit the high ground of memory when you are indifferent to the wasting of other lives.

We demand that our government must live up to Aotearoa’s international commitments, and act to protect the people who are being slaughtered by the government and armed forces of Israel—crimes against humanity. Why don’t you join us in that call?

We worry about racism. We see it here, and we see its naked, deadly consequence daily in Palestine. Can you not see the need for education regarding that racism?

Antisemitism, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate; can you not join us in condemning all of the racism? That is how we will roll it back—together. We are each others’ best protection, but no single group will be safe in isolation from the others.

Fred Albert and Marilyn Garson (co-founders, Alternative Jewish Voices)