Anti-Israel Protesters Prove Themselves Antisemites

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Critics of Israel persist in claiming they are not antisemitic.

Several years ago, I happened by Miami Beach’s Holocaust Memorial, perhaps a half-mile west of the beach and Collins Avenue. I learned of its existence by accident. I gazed at it for a few minutes and left.

Subsequently, I learned that a group of anti-Israel activists held a demonstration in front of the memorial. What does the Holocaust Memorial have to do with Israel’s conflict with the so-called Palestinians?

How disgusting that they would take their shaky case to the memorial. It insults the Jewish people. Likewise, they applied this approach to the United Nations last Tuesday and then the following Friday to yet another Holocaust memorial, this one in center city Philadelphia.

At this writing, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced an ambitious plan to transform the Middle East. We can hope it works, but we must wait until events around it develop before we have a better idea of the concept.

While most Jews spent the first day of Rosh Hashanah in solemn observance, delegates to the United Nations Security Council spent Rosh Hashanah’s first day urging a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and release of the hostages.

The Israelis notified the U.N. that Sept. 23 was the start of the Jewish New Year, but U.N. went ahead with the debate, anyway.

Leaders of the more westernized nations – especially Australia, Britain, Canada and France – could have urged the Security Council to wait one day so as to be sensitive to Jewish traditions.

Leaders of those four nations announced their nations’ recognition of a state of Palestine, even though no sovereign entity called Palestine ever existed. They gave away their naivete by urging a two-state solution and a cease-fire while noting that Hamas would not be involved in Gaza’s future. How would they exclude Hamas when Israel cannot compel their surrender?

A cease-fire? Hamas’ slaughter of 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, violated a cease-fire that was established in 2021 to resolve a military confrontation.

The two-state solution? Israel proposed that in July 2000, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat responded with a return to hostilities.

What was really rich was listening to the Russian and Chinese delegates berate Israel for its attacks on Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry said that 63,000 Gazans were killed. Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainians and China threatens to take over Taiwan for expansionist purposes. However anyone characterizes Israel’s military operation, it was provoked by Oct. 7 and the kidnapping of 250 Israelis and others.

On Friday morning, representatives of other nations walked out before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could begin his speech. This could be viewed as a more direct reaction to Israeli policies.

Ninety miles south that same morning, 300 visitors gathered for the unveiling of a mural dedicated to Holocaust remembrance at the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Museum at 17^th and the Parkway, two blocks from Philadelphia’s City Hall and 15 miles from where I live.

Dozens of anti-Israel activists must have mistaken the event for Netanyahu’s U.N. appearance because they protested against Israel’s military response in Gaza.

Several demonstrators dressed in white, resembling ghosts, reminding attendees that their ghosts from Auschwitz were being accompanied by ghosts from Gaza, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. They held up signs reading “Never again is now” and “We are haunted by what we see in Gaza.”

How grotesque. While they were at it, they might as well have brought some ovens along, heated them up and dragged the visitors into them. How vulgar to remind the attendees, who could be survivors and their relatives, of the Nazi horrors.

It is a side of the anti-Israel mob we do not always recognize. If they have valid concerns, why can’t they communicate them in a civilized manner? Why must they sneer and taunt?

“There is a Shoah in Gaza,” declared one of the signs. Should we one day expect a Shoah at 17^th and the Parkway?