By Hadi Yahmid – Paris
Feeling stained by Israeli crimes against the civilian population of the bombed-out Gaza Strip, two prominent French-American Jews are demanding the removal of their relatives names from Israel’s famous Holocaust memorial.
"We ask that our grandmother’s name be removed from the wall at Yad Vashem," Michael Neumann and his brother Osha wrote to Israeli President Shimon Peres, also director of Yad Vashem museum.
In their letter, a copy of which was obtained by IslamOnline.net, the brothers ask for the name of Gertrud Neumann to be erased from the memorial of Jewish victims in WWII.
"Our grandmother was a victim of that very ideal of ethnic sovereignty in whose cause Israel has shed so much blood for so long," they stressed.
"In life, our grandmother suffered enough. Stop making her a party to this horror in her death," added the brothers, who hold French, American and Canadian nationalities.
"Please take this as an expression of disgust and contempt for your state and all it represents."
The brothers are following the example of Jean-Moise Braitberg, a French novelist who also wrote to Peres asking that the name of his grandfather, Moshe Braitberg, and other members of his family be removed from the Yad Vashem memorial.
He insisted that the names of his relatives must not become part of justifying the Israeli cruelty against Palestinians.
Israel’s 22-day onslaught on the densely-populated Gaza enclave killed more than 1,350 people, half of them women and children, and injured thousands more.
Some 21,100 homes, 1,500 factories, 25 mosques, 31 government buildings and scores of schools across Gaza were destroyed by the air, sea and ground attacks.
Shame
In their letter, the Neumanns link their request to the burden Israel’s crimes has placed on Jews and humanity at large. "Our complicity was despicable," Michael, a professor of philosophy at a Canadian university, wrote.
"I do not believe that the Jewish people, in whose name you have committed so many crimes with such outrageous complacency, can ever rid itself of the shame you have brought upon us."
Michael — the author of many books including "The Case Against Israel" and "What is Anti-Semitism" – insists that Nazi propaganda, for all its calumnies, never disgraced and corrupted the Jews but Israel did.
"You blacken our names not only by your acts, but by the lies, the coy evasions, the smirking arrogance and the infantile self-righteousness with which you embroider our history."
Osha, an artist and civil rights lawyer, believes that Israel actions have made the word Jew synonym to "fascist".
"Israel long ago woke me from my dogmatic slumber about the immutable relationship of Jews to Fascists. It has engineered a merger between the image of Jewish torturers and war criminals and that of emaciated concentration camp victims," he wrote.
"I find this merger obscene. I want no part of it."
(IslamOnline.net)
