Anti Fascism,  Israel/Palestine

Historical twinning

David Aaronovitch in The Times today on the shameful act of historical twinning engaged in by various figures on the left as they insist on comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto.

George Galloway and Ken Livingstone have both been at it with the former pronouncing: “Those murdering them [the occupants of Gaza] are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1942” and the latter calling Gaza a ghetto “in exactly the same way that the Warsaw Ghetto was”.

It’s easy to gloss over history, but apparently when it comes to holocaust it is absolutely required. The situation in Gaza is bad, but the population of the Warsaw Ghetto was reduced by 380,000 through starvation, mass deportations and extermination.

“Busy people sometimes hurry their reading. Mr Galloway, for example, may only have skimmed the day-by-day reports made by SS Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. On the third day of the operation Stroop tells how ‘large numbers of Jews – entire families – already on fire, jumped from the windows. We made sure that these, as well as the other Jews, were liquidated immediately”.”

Elsewhere in The Times today Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar warned that the Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world.

“They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine,” Mahmoud Zahar said in a televised broadcast recorded at a secret location. “They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”

This as the paper also reported that Jewish groups said yesterday that the invasion of Gaza had provoked a surge in anti-Semitic intimidation and violence in London and Manchester. Jewish charity, the Community Security Trust said that the threat had increased after comments by Hamas leaders calling for attacks on Jewish people. On Saturday when three youths tried to set fire to Brondesbury Park Synagogue in northwest London.

Gene adds:
Perhaps Livingstone and Galloway can answer this: Were Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto routinely transported to Germany for life-saving treatment, with the cooperation of Nazi authorities?