The New Dark Age

20 March, 2010 — International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Camden New Journal article letters arising out of the House of Commons meeting of the Never Again – For Anyone tour on Holocaust Memorial Day. The letters, responding to attacks are, in chronological order, from Yael Kahn, Ivor Dembina IJAN.

Auschwitz survivor, 86, takes on the protesters 4 Feb 2010
IT’S not often you meet a have-a-go hero, let alone three! I met spritely 86-year-old Dr Hajo Meyer, a survivor of the Nazi death-camps, at the House of Commons. At a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony, Dr Meyer spoke about the Nazis and pleaded for an end to the war against Palestinians. Israel, he said, was “dehumanising the Palestinians as the Nazis tried to dehumanise me”. But when a dozen protesters tried breaking up the meeting, shouting pro-Israel slogans and hurling abuse at Dr Meyer, they met their match. The plucky professor – barely over 5ft – refused to back down. “I grew up under Hitler and lived through Auschwitz. I’m not scared of people like you,” he told the burly protestors. Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn, who helped organise the meeting, had to call the police and it took several officers to cart the men away. Minutes later we heard the voice of another hero. Speaking by telephone from Gaza, Dr Haider Eid reported how Israel’s blockade of the enclave has cut power and plunged its 1.3m people into darkness. Because of the embargo families are in tents, orphans on the streets, food and medicines have dwindled, he said. But he wanted pay tribute to the tens of thousands of Jews trapped by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. The meeting was chaired by Hampstead resident Selma James, 79 year-old widow of the black writer CLR James.

Holocaust survivor’s courage
Published: 4 March 2010
I HAD the privilege of seeing Auschwitz survivor Dr Hajo Meyer’s courage in the face of the repeated attacks at the House of Commons meeting, and he certainly did not look like someone “wheeled out… who has been bamboozled…” (letter by Nicole Segre, February 25). The attacks at Dr Meyer on the Holocaust Day event escalated until House of Commons police escorted out a Jewish Zionist official. Then another heckler was escorted out by a policeman but, just when he passed next to us, mainly Jewish people, he shockingly waved his hand in the Nazi salute and shouted “sieg heil”. By contrast, John Gulliver showed his humanity in his compassionate article about the keynote speaker 86-year-old Dr Meyer (February 4). With dignity Dr Meyer watched the hateful hecklers, only to resume his coherent account of his personal experience and historical analysis. Unfazed in the face of the Zionist attackers, he told the audience of the lessons on the Siege of Gaza to be learned from the Holocaust. Dr Meyer’s talk was a special inspiration for me, being an Israeli, currently having regular contact with Gaza, and a daughter of parents who escaped Nazi Germany. I find Dr Meyer’s lessons poignant, especially when I face denial and silence in spite of the evidence of the death, hunger and suffering caused by the merciless siege of Gaza imposed by Israel.

Yael Kahn
Chair of Islington Friends of Yibna

Bankrupt
Published: 11 March 2010
THE treatment of Auschwitz survivor Dr Hajo Meyer by Zionist Jews comes as no surprise to people like me who have personally experienced the kind of thuggish behaviour they regularly indulge in. As a Jewish person who has been on the receiving end of their threats and intimidation, I regard it as important for others to know that bullying and cowardice are their stock in trade. The only useful thing to take from their behaviour towards Dr Meyer is that it reveals once again their disdain for civility, the bankruptcy of their politics and the perversity of their claim to speak for the welfare of Jewish people whether they live in Israel or any place else.
Ivor Dembina, SE1

The True meaning of Never Again
Published: 18 March 2010 WE brought together Auschwitz survivor Dr Hajo Meyer and Palestinian activist Dr Haidar Eid, whom the Israeli blockade prevented from leaving Gaza but who addressed the meeting via live telephone link, (Letters, Yael Kahn, Holocaust survivor’s courage, March 4). They were joined by speakers from communities who had also suffered and resisted genocide and other forms of mass murder: Armenian, Irish, Native American, the Atlantic slave trade, Roma, Rwandan, and others. Our aim is to realise the true meaning of Never Again, not only for Jews but for anyone anywhere. Why did Zionists attack Dr Meyer?

Why do they want Jewish people to be the exception?

It seems that this somehow excuses Israel’s exceptional brutality against Palestinians. How can we allow our history of suffering to hide and even be an excuse for the suffering of others?

Dr Meyer, whom Zionists have always failed to silence, knows the difference between Judaism and Zionism, between anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism and between commitment to collective humanity and commitment to the interests of an apartheid state.

Michael Kalmanovitz
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

email: (international) mailto:ijan@ijsn.net (UK) mailto:uk@ijsn.net mob: 07816 251377