It’s vital for all of us in Britain to speak out now against our own government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
I was seven years old when Germany invaded and occupied their unreliable ally, Hungary, in March 1944. This makes me 87 years old now. But my memories of hiding as a hunted Jew on false papers, and the utter devastation of the climactic fighting around us, between a trapped German Army and the Red Army, are still a crystal clear memory. I see the burnt-out cars, tanks, dead horses and human bodies, ammunition and helmets thrown about, burnt-out buildings, mountains of rubble and broken glass everywhere – just like tragically destroyed Gaza is looking today.
For over a year now it’s been clear that Israel’s plan is to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza in order to force as many people as possible to leave. This policy has many differences from Nazi Germany’s plan to destroy Jewish society in Europe – but it also has many similarities. That is why, as a Holocaust survivor, I’ve felt compelled to join various pro-Palestine protests in London.
These protests have been numerous and often huge. So it’s no surprise that the authorities have imposed increasing restrictions on them in order to dissuade people from attending. But I was still surprised when the Metropolitan Police called me in for an interview.
We don’t know quite how far those in power intend to go with their restrictions on the right to protest. But we do know they want to portray London’s pro-Palestine demos as tainted with anti-Semitism. This is despite the fact that these protests have included thousands of Jews and that many Jews, including myself, have addressed the protesters from the stage.
A year ago, in April 2024, I gave my first speech on a stage in Hyde Park where I told the huge crowd about Adolf Eichmann coming to Hungary to organise the deportation of 400,000 Jews to Auschwitz. I also spoke about the 15 members of my own family who perished there and about my father who was taken to Belsen and Theresienstadt concentration camps – although eventually he did return. I ended the speech like this: We Jews who survived all this pain, killings, humiliation and destruction are against the use of the memory of the Holocaust by the Government of Israel as cover and justification for the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.
What was most striking about the speech was not what I said but that the huge crowd listened in such respectful silence and then applauded with such enthusiasm. To suggest that such a crowd was anti-Semitic – let alone potentially violent – is absurd. Yet that is exactly what several newspapers did when they published evidence-free articles the next day falsely claiming that the crowd had threatened to vandalise Hyde Park’s Holocaust memorial.
Since then, pro-Israel politicians and journalists have continued to claim that our protests are “hate marches” or “no-go zones for Jews”. Recent claims that our marches are a threat to London’s synagogues are a further development of this relentless – but baseless – campaign. Anyone who has witnessed the overwhelming warmth and support that our group of Holocaust survivor descendants – as well as the wider Jewish bloc – experience regularly on the marches, will understand quite how baseless.
Most importantly, this whole campaign is an intentional distraction from the main issue, which is to stop the Gaza genocide now. As Israel resumes its indiscriminate bombing – murdering hundreds more civilians in Gaza – it’s vital for all of us in Britain to speak out now against our own government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
