February 14th, The duty published an opinion text by international relations professor Maïka Sondarjee on the recent decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding provisional measures in the case between South Africa and Israel for alleged “genocide” in Gaza. Ignoring the fact that this text, in our opinion, makes dangerous shortcuts in addition to not once mentioning Hamas and its responsibility, we must express our shock and our concern at a comment which opens what experts call Holocaust inversion and which conveys biased information.
Thus, Mme Sondarjee writes that “the decision is historic, as Israel has long hidden behind the atrocities of the Holocaust to avoid accusations of crimes against humanity or war crimes in Palestine.” In doing so, it turns historical trauma into a weapon against the victims of this same trauma.
We further believe that this passage opens up potential abuses such as attacking the State of Israel as a Jewish collective and comparing contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, which are two examples of contemporary anti-Semitism, or otherwise, at a minimum , notions that contribute to the trivialization of the Holocaust and the normalization of anti-Semitism.
The charge of genocide, used so frequently by Israel’s critics, aims to strip Israel of its humanity and delegitimize it so that it becomes a pariah within the international community, thereby denying the Jewish people’s right to their self-determination.
However, we believe that any comment that could lead to a cynical and unfounded comparison between the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government and the murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime exploits the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Generally speaking, comparing a persecuted group, and even more so the victims of a genocide, to their oppressors seems incredibly immoral to us.
In today’s climate, we must emphasize the need to avoid inflammatory comments like this and work together to be part of the solution, not the problem.