Israel Furious at Kristallnacht Anniversary Event Linking Holocaust, Nakba
Israel has expressed outrage at an event to be held in Tel Aviv on Wednesday that apparently draws a line between the Holocaust and the Nakba. The event is being held by the Tel Aviv branch of the Goethe Institute, a global German cultural nonprofit association, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass.”
Kristallnacht was a 1938 pogrom that saw Nazi mobs attack synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses across Germany. It is largely seen as the opening salvo in the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe that led to the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children. Nakba is an Arabic term, meaning “catastrophe,” that refers to the displacement of around 700,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1949 war that saw the establishment of the State of Israel.
“Almost 75 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, memory remains a politically controversial field,” reads the blurb in Hebrew regarding the event, which is titled “Understanding the pain of the other.”
“Jews focus on the Holocaust, while the Palestinians focus on the fateful year of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of them were victims of flight and deportation at the hands of Jewish fighters, a year known in Arabic as the ‘Nakba’,” it reads.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that it was “shocked and disgusted at the blatant cheapening of the Holocaust and the cynical and manipulative intent to create a connection whose entire purpose is to defame Israel,” adding that it “calls on all parties involved to cancel this outrageous event.”
The gathering is being held in conjunction with the Tel Aviv branch of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, a German organization that describes itself as an “internationally operating, progressive nonprofit institution for civic education” that has close ties to Germany’s Die Linke (Left) party.
