Historian Enzo Traverso: Israel Is Using the Memory of the Holocaust to Justify Genocide in Gaza

In the acclaimed new book _Gaza Faces History_, historian Enzo Traverso challenges Western attitudes toward Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza by reckoning with the larger historical context of the Holocaust and the Nakba. Traverso details how memorializing the Holocaust became a sort of "civil religion" that honored human rights and the values of Western liberal democracies after the Second World War. However, in recent decades, Traverso warns, "the memory of the Holocaust experienced a paradoxical metamorphosis, and it was weaponized by Israel and by most Western powers in order to become a policy of an unconditional support of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories." Witnessing this distortion of history, "I was shocked by the way in which many words, many concepts had been abused and misunderstood," says Traverso. "Now we are facing a paradoxical situation in which the perpetrator is Hamas and the Palestinians, and the victims are the Israelis. And this is a reversal of reality."

[ouagadougou]

Thank you, Mr. Traverso for telling the truth with such clarity and integrity.

[philipmeade]

No greater shame than abusing the tragic memory of one genocide to defend another genocide.

[nicholausbuthmann]

One Genocide NEVER JUSTIFIES ANOTHER EVER ! Glad Amy Goodman & Enzo Traverso are Stating Such fearlessly !

[mfh_MFH]

not only israel...USA and Western countries are equally supporting this

[Hope-hg]

Never again means never again for everyone not just one specific group of people.

[adinahaun]

It’s so tragic that one holocaust is not justifying another. Again, the world stands by, to its shame.

[docholiday]

Hero: anyone opposed to genocide

Villain: anyone for genocide
Only immoral villains disagree

[Klindohaffle]

Also the genocide of gypsies and slavs but they’re not considered special.

[MariscaMulder]

Prof. Traverso, thank you very much for this interview, your book and your courage. Stay healthy and safe 🙏

[loisk]

This is a very important interview. I hope Prof. Traverso will be a guest on DN! more in future.

[Davidpath]

“51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis” by Lenni Brenner, March 16 2010

[NancyRode-ui]

🚫stop all military support, 4 Netanyahu

[rundmv]

Norman Finkelstein, while talking about his Holocaust surviving mother: "The greatest crime would not be to deny the Holocaust, but to use the memory of the Holocaust genocide to justify another".

[YouTubdotCub]

Fantastic interview, thank you for this!

[donaldseekins]

Even in the context of World War II, the Holocaust was not unique. A "Second holocaust" took place in East and Southeast Asia with the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Asian continent during 1931-45. In China alone, some 20-25 million people died as a result of Japanese war crimes, and millions more in Southeast Asia and the islands of the South Pacific. The Japanese military did not build death camps (with the big exception of the Unit 731 biological warfare center in NE China), but they carried out rape, murder and plunder on a scale that had not been seen since the Mongols in the 13th century. Without realizing that there were (at least) TWO Holocausts during World War II, we cannot understand the nature of man's inhumanity to man.

Focusing on the Nazi Holocaust is narrow, even racist. The lives of Chinese, Koreans Filipinos, Indonesians were worth just as much as the lives of Jews in Europe!

[florianacristescu]

He's absolutely right. Very good analize and clarifications of the distortion and inversion of the historical reality.

[l]

Isn't it unbearable and infuriating?!!!

[michaeljames]

Thank you once again, Amy and team. The likes of yourself, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky and others, are my 'Some of my best friends are black', when protesting the genocide in Palestine (it's not just in Gaza.), is labelled antisemitic. The admiration I have for anyone who is able to escape their presumed ideological pigeon-hole and speak truth to power, is simply enormous. Growing up in the north of Ireland during 'The troubles', I had many heroes (I was young), but if you were from my community and had spoken out against 'our violence', I would have detested you, labelled you Quislings (no ironic pun intended.), so I can only imagine the Ire you face from within. Thank you, all, so much.

[xxyzp]

and Norman Finkelstein who is anti Zionist and anti everything said, And I quote:• Gaza is the new Warsaw ghetto", so who????

[dcrow]

No one talks about the suffering of the Japanese people during the same period, but especially during 1945. They died by fascism, forced labor, and, mostly by fire bombing, and radiation poisoning.