Israelis on Facebook wish death for Holocaust survivors against 'Protective Edge'

I came across this article, written  on the Israeli magazine website 972mag at the time of Protective Edge.  300 survivors of the holocaust had taken an advertisement out in the New York Times to say that they dissociated themselves from Protective Edge, the bombing and attack on Gaza and the mass killing inflicted on a largely civilian population by state-of-the-art Israeli planes.

The reaction of a section and not a small section of the Right in Israel was to take to social media to wish death upon those who wrote and not merely death, but a desire that Hitler had finished the work and killed them too in the gas chambers.

How you might ask has it come to it that a state that calls itself Jewish is the harbinger of those who wish to see a holocaust perpetrated against their Jewish enemies?  If someone who was non-Jewish in Britain and most other European countries told someone who is Jewish that they wish they had also died in the holocaust they would be liable to prosecution for hate crimes, incitement to racial hatred etc.  In Israel such comments are made with impunity.

I have previously covered instances of the use of ‘Hitler was right’ directed against the Israeli left before  in relation to protests at the eviction of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem, but this article by Ami Kaufman demonstrates that such individual reactions are commonplace on the right in Israel.

Why is this so?  On one level an increasing number of Israelis, mainly from the religious Zionist and nationalist sectors identify the Nazis as strong, like Israelis, and the Palestinians as being the counterpart of the Nazis’ victims, the weak European Jews.  The traditional attitude of Israeli Jews to the holocaust survivors when they came to Israel in the post-war period was to despise them.  They were termed ‘sapon’ (soap) after the widespread myth that the bodies of Jews had been turned into soap. [see Tom Segev’s The 7^th Million]

This attitude was downplayed post 1967 as the Holocaust began to be increasingly used as an ideological weapon in the war against the Palestinians and anti-Zionism. 

But the Left in Israel, because it is seen as being ‘weak’ just like the Jews of the diaspora therefore brings upon itself a new holocaust.  Indeed according to this warped thinking they actually deserve to have been killed in the Holocaust.  This is the logical culmination of the Zionist nationalism.   It identifies with the Jews’ historical enemies because they were, at least, strong.

Tony Greenstein

‘Asher Solomon: It’s a shame Hitler didn’t finish the job.’

 By Ami Kaufman August 25, 2014

Nope, it’s not The Onion.

A few days ago some 300 Holocaust survivors placed an ad in the New York Times condemning the massacre in Gaza. My colleague from Local Call, John Brown, has selected a few of the responses on Facebook that Israelis posted in response to the ad.

I’ve translated a few from John’s selection:

David Cohen: Those aren’t Holocaust survivors those are probably collaborators with the Nazis.

Shmulik Halphon: He’s invited to go back to Auschwitz.

Itzik Levy: These are survivors who were Kapos. Leftist traitors. That’s why they live abroad and not in the Jewish State.

Vitali Guttman: Enough, they should die already. They survived the Holocaust only to do another Holocaust to Israel in global public opinion?

Meir Dahan: No wonder Hitler murdered 6 million Jews because of people like you you’re not even Jews you’re disgusting people a disgrace to humanity and so are your offspring you are trash.

Asher Solomon: It’s a shame Hitler didn’t finish the job.

Katy Morali: Holocaust survivors who think like this are invited to go die in the gas chambers.

Yafa Ashraf: Shitty Ashkenazis you are the Nazis.

Israelis lash out against holocaust survivors who oppose ‘Protective Edge’