What can international pressure do? A lot. The only story people are talking about today is the spectacular story of the Dutch man, 91, who has returned a governmental prize to Israel for his role, and his family’s, in saving a Jewish boy during the Holocaust– after 6 of his relatives were killed in Gaza. “Israel has no idea how thoroughly it has lost international support,” says a liberal Zionist writer, reflecting on the moment.
Amira Hass broke the story.
The Telegraph:
In 2011 the Israeli authorities declared Henk Zanoli ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ – a title bestowed upon non-Jews who helped save Jews from the Holocaust. During the Nazi occupation of Holland Mr Zanoli’s family had helped shelter a young boy until the Allied liberation in 1945.
But Mr Zanoli returned his prize to the Israeli embassy in the Netherlands after hearing that six of his relatives had been killed during an attack on their home in Gaza.
Also reported by Christopher Schuetze and (the wonderful) Ann Barnard in the Times.
Dr. [Ismail] Zeyada said last month that none of his family members were militants. Israel says that it takes precautions to avoid killing civilians, and that Hamas purposely increases civilian casualties by operating in residential neighborhoods. It has offered no information on whether the Zeyada family home was hit purposely, and if so, what the target was and whether it justified a strike that killed six civilians. The military told the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which first reported Mr. Zanoli’s decision, only that it was investigating “all irregular incidents.”
Here are excerpts of the great letter from Zanoli to the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands (available at the Times). Note that Zanoli describes the “ethnic cleansing” at Israel’s foundation, and says the only way out of the “racist… quagmire the Jewish people of Israel have gotten themselves into” is for Israel to give Palestinians equal rights
I understand that in your professional role, in which I am addressing you here, you may not be able to express understanding for my decision. However, I am convinced that at both a personal and human level you will have a profound understanding of the fact that for me to hold on to the honour granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on, who lost no less than six of their relatives in Gaza at the hands of the State of Israel…
After the horror of the holocaust my family strongly supported the Jewish people also with regard to their aspirations to build a national home. Over more than six decades I have however slowly come to realize that the Zionist project had from its beginning a racist element in it in aspiring to build a state exclusively for Jews. As a consequence, ethnic cleansing took place at the time of the establishment of your state and your state continues to suppress the Palestinian people on the West Bank and in Gaza who live under Israeli occupation since 1967. The actions of your state in Gaza these days have already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity…The only way out of the quagmire the Jewish people of Israel have gotten themselves into is by granting all living under the control of the State of Israel the same political rights and social and economic rights and opportunities.
Ayelet Waldman tweets the story, saying:
I fear Israel has no idea how thoroughly it has lost international support.
Waldman has supported Peace Now, which has largely supported the onslaught on Gaza, including this resentful insight from its regular Israeli analyst on the appointment of a Human Rights Council team to investigate the Gaza slaughter:
That the international community has its own double standard when it comes to Israel’s wars against non-state actors embedded amidst civilians is obvious.
Two elements of this story that will resonate. Most important, Zanoli has done what Barack Obama and J Street could have done if they wanted, but haven’t done– applied international pressure. People always question whether the BDS movement is effective. Well, this gesture is part of that movement; and pressure like this will force Israel to wake up.
Second, the Holocaust happened in Europe. But Israel is its self-appointed adjudicator. How long can that last. Hannah Arendt was concerned about this more than 50 years ago.
OT, but I find the title “Righteous among the Nations” a bit insulting. Of course, it does not, in strict logic, imply that people who do not get that award are not righteous, but the very title itself does suggest that righteousness is a rare quality in “the Nations”.
” But Mr Zanoli returned his prize to the Israeli embassy in the Netherlands after hearing that six of his relatives had been killed during an attack on their home in Gaza.”
Actually, it was his grand-niece’s Palestinian husband’s relatives who died in Gaza.
You can feel it, as the trickle becomes a flood, washing away the layers of deceit and deception that the zionist narrative has attempted to impose on the outside world (unlike the narrative they have for themselves). I linked to it already, but it is appropriate here to mention the letter from Holocaust survivors and their descendants to The Guardian, after they published the extraordinarily blatant piece of propaganda from Elie Weisel
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/liberal-guardian-print-pro-genocide-ad
http://ijsn.net/gaza/survivors-and-descendants-letter/
And just to emphasise how zionists are losing any contact with the communities around them, The Jewish Chronicle in the UK was forced to grovel before its readers and apologise for printing an ad for humanitarian aid for Gaza
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28812983
(Oh the irony of these two very different papers printing ads which enrage their readers)
That is bad enough, although entirely indicative of the cult like mentality inside the bubble, but much more indicative of which way the tide is flowing is that the story was broadcast most of the day on BBC bulletins, leading most disinterested people to marvel at this demonstration of cold-blooded inhumanity.
The Weisel and DEC ads only confirm how far the zionists have become detached from any sense of the territory civil discourse occupies, and the bare minimum of decency the majority of people expect. So entrenched and accustomed have they become to spouting such egregious falsehoods and blatant propaganda that they have no idea of how they are offending people with such naked attempts to bludgeon them into submission. The days are over when they could solemnly intone sanctimonious spin on ethnic cleansing and occupation. Because they don’t realise it, they think they can keep up the old routines, but the expansion of the media, as Paul Mason perceptively wrote
about
http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/impact-social-media-israelgaza-conflict/1182
has drained any authority or credibility they assumed. (His latest piece is also excellent, finding hope in a younger generation).
@just- Palestinians don’t count.
The award was awarded to him and his mother by name, on June 22, 2011. His mother had died in 1981. The YV was for hiding a Jewish child. But the family did much more in resistance against the occupier.
Questions that come to mind: why did Yad Vashem only discover this in 2011, 66 years after WW2? And: why 30 (thirty) years after the mother had died? Why not earlier?
http://db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId=9120199