Gaza to Holocaust Memorial: Feed Me!
Yves EnglerCanada’s politicians and media are outraged over graffiti at the Ottawa Holocaust monument. But, what’s truly appalling is the use of the 80-year-old Nazi holocaust to justify Israel’s ongoing one.
On Sunday night the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa was vandalized with red paint stating, “feed me”. It’s a strange message that might be a reference to Israel starving Palestinians in Gaza.
It’s also odd timing as it took place the same night Israel kidnapped Greta Thunberg and the rest of the Madeleen freedom flotilla boat seeking to defy the 20-year illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza. It succeeded in diverting attention from Israel’s crimes on the high seas.
To sort out the meaning of this graffiti, it is necessary to take an historical step back.
The National Holocaust Monument was instigated by Conservative MP Tim Uppal. The Stephen Harper acolyte decided to push for the monument after a Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee sponsored trip to Israel’s Yad Vashem in 2010. At about the same time Uppal spoke at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and sponsored a House of Commons resolution condemning Israeli Apartheid Week, which social justice activists organized on many university campuses.
The Holocaust Monument in Ottawa is part of what Norman Finkelstein has labeled the “Holocaust Industry”. When the monument opened in 2017 Haaretz columnist Amira Hass pointed this out in a column headlined “Redundant Monuments and the Contest of Victimhood”. The Israeli journalist wrote: “Why should Canada and Britain, two countries that were not conquered by Nazi Germany and which did not suffer its genocide policies, have to add another memorial to commemorate the murder of Europe’s Jews? Is it really because they refused to take in Jewish refugees in time and in numbers that would have enabled saving many, or because these countries have Jewish citizens who are survivors or children of survivors? Who needs another large-scale monument when the Holocaust is already commemorated and mentioned in the West more than any other dark period in history?
“Canada and Britain have obviously declared us Jews as winners in the prestigious contest of who is the greatest victim. But the really big winner is the State of Israel, which presents itself as the representative of the entire Jewish nation, past and present. While exploiting victims of the Holocaust, it refuses to part from its legacy of expropriation and expulsion of the Palestinians.”
Hass also noted that “out of the 30 official monuments in Ottawa, there is only one devoted to First Nations, and even that one commemorates only the war veterans among them.” Ottawa prefers to memorialize the Nazi murder of European Jewry over Canada’s genocide of First Nations.
In The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Norman Finkelstein argues that the US Jewish establishment has exploited the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for economic and political gain and to further the interests of Israel. Finkelstein shows how discussion of the Nazi Holocaust grew exponentially after the June 1967 Six Day war. Prior to that war, which provided a decisive service to US geopolitical aims in the Middle East, the genocide of European Jewry was a topic largely relegated to private forums and among left-wing intellectuals.
The same was true in Canada as I detail in my 2010 book Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid. The first Canadian Holocaust memorial was established in Montreal in 1977.
Since Finkelstein published his book in 2000 commemorations of Nazi crimes against European Jewry have grown multifold. In recent years most Canadian provinces have mandated Nazi holocaust education in their curriculums.
In the past 20 months the various holocaust museums and education centres across the country have openly promoted Israel’s genocide. As I recently detailed, the Montreal Holocaust Museum has promoted Israel’s crimes. On May 27 the Montreal Holocaust Museum launched a major research initiative with Francophone Quebec academics and students. The keynote speaker was one of France’s leading academic promoters of Israel’s holocaust in Gaza, Eva Illouz. A Hebrew university and École des hautes études en sciences sociales professor, Illouz spoke about her recent book généalogie d’une haine vertueuse (Genealogy of a Virtuous Hatred), which claims leftist opposition to Israel’s crimes is anti-Jewish. Illouz has called this new antisemitism “more perverse than its predecessor”. In February 2024 she told the Jewish Forward, “I am forced to reckon I was oblivious to a subterranean antisemitism that had been simmering below the surface. It is made of various ideologies, including Soviet-inspired anti-Zionism, politically radical Islam, and post-colonial undermining of the legitimacy of Israel. This antisemitism is more perverse than its predecessor because it is proffered in the name of progressive values, thereby creating enormous confusion on the Left, high jacking its rhetoric, and disempowering the Israel left itself. …. I lost respect for segments of the Left, including the Jewish Left like Jewish Currents or The Jewish Voice of Peace, who were unable to live up to the demands of the hour and show compassion and solidarity with the victims of a pogrom [Palestinians breaking from their cage on October 7, 2003].”
By insisting the only lens from which to view Israel’s actions is one of Jewish victimhood, these holocaust museums/monuments exploit the memory of the 85-year-old Nazi holocaust to justify Israel’s ongoing one. Until Israel and its supporters empathize with Palestinians they feed inhumanity.