Two Palestinian activists give their perspectives on Holocaust Remembrance Day
Hamza Howidy is 25. When he was just 19, he co-organized massive human rights protests in Gaza. He did it again when he was 23. Hamas imprisoned and tortured him both times, along with hundreds of others. He now lives in Germany and advocates for peace and human rights in Gaza. He is the most amazing activist I know of.
On this Holocaust Memorial Day, we take a moment to honor the six million Jewish men, women, and children who tragically lost their lives during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of others who suffered persecution and death at the hands of the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
This day stands as a poignant reminder of the unfathomable horrors of genocide, the destructive power of hatred, dehumanization, and demonization, and the remarkable resilience of humanity in confronting profound evil. This day serves not only as a remembrance of our history but also as a pledge to create a future devoid of antisemitism, racism, and intolerance.
As someone who identifies as Palestinian, it really bothered me to witness certain individuals and groups making the Holocaust a political topic, not to mention who started with projection, describing the war in Gaza as a Holocaust, which is absolutely wrong. And what's even more concerning is how some pro-Hamas folks, who claim to support Palestine, are indirectly promoting antisemitism by intertwining it with the Palestinian cause and the conflict in Gaza.
I just can't wrap my head around why these people are doing this or why a certain president is getting involved and making it all political. It's truly baffling to me.
I often grapple with guilt over my ignorance of the Holocaust until my twenties, especially considering the close ties and shared future we are meant to have with our Jewish neighbors. Our educational systems have failed to adequately address this crucial topic, leaving us without a proper understanding of their history and suffering, which ultimately hinders our ability to connect with and empathize with one another.
I feel a profound connection to the significance of this day. In my quest for peace and coexistence, I have come to realize that acknowledging the suffering of others is the crucial first step toward fostering genuine mutual understanding.
The Holocaust represents not only a deep tragedy for the Jewish community but also a poignant reminder for all of humanity. It is a cautionary tale that underscores the catastrophic repercussions of unchecked hatred, dehumanization, and indifference.
We are dedicated to educating future generations, combating bigotry in all its manifestations, and striving relentlessly for a future where such atrocities belong firmly to the past.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib spent most of his childhood in Gaza. Now he lives in the United States, writes about international politics and public policy, and advocates for peace and human rights issues in Palestine.
Why I too choose to memorialize the Holocaust:
When I left the Gaza Strip as a teenager and headed to the United States, I knew nothing about the Holocaust, its details, or its contemporary implications.
The dismissal of the scale of the Holocaust or denying the scale of the slaughter and its true grotesque extent were unfortunately commonplace in Palestinian society, mainly as a defense mechanism – because it was believed that the acknowledgment of the Jewish people’s suffering automatically minimized the hardships that Palestinians experienced themselves under occupation or displacement. There was only space for one or the other.
There were, however, those who worked inside Israel and had close relationships with Israelis, providing them with access to a different narrative that educated them about some aspects of the Holocaust.
Once I was in the US, I developed a close friendship with a Holocaust survivor of French origin whose parents had been murdered in Auschwitz.
A.H. was a steadfast ally who made a point of connecting with Palestinians in general, and young Palestinians in particular, to share her story, offer friendship and comradery, and build robust alliances.
She was instrumental in saving my life by bringing me back to the US when I was stuck in Egypt after the cultural exchange program ended and I was unable to return to the Gaza Strip due to Hamas’s abduction of an Israeli soldier and a mini war that followed.
She financed my return to the US and helped me get started at a private school that offered the documents necessary to obtain a student visa before I was able to apply for political asylum in 2007. We have kept in close contact now that she’s in her late 80s, and she has been horrified by the disaster that has been unfolding in the Gaza Strip.
Two months ago, she made an anonymous $50k donation to a major medical NGO that was saving lives in my honor. A.H. even promised to help my family rebuild their destroyed home in Gaza City if and when that time comes.
I am sharing this because it is easy for people to politicize the Holocaust and its Remembrance Day, as well as to forget the immense human toll it had on real human lives.
Importantly, what people choose to do with the memory of the Holocaust, regardless of their background or individual feelings and views, is just as important.
This terrible tragedy should be transformed into an impetus for the betterment of humanity and the human condition; compassion, bridge-building, radical pragmatism across our differences, and holding space for multiple sufferings and pains can all be inspired by honoring the Holocaust and its victims.
For some, this will be a long journey, and it will take them a while before they get to this place. The goal should not be shunning them but inspiring and encouraging them to see something else.
I look back at my days as a young teenager coming out of Gaza, carrying the weight of my trauma and that of my parents and grandparents and, indeed, the entire society, and how difficult it was to create space for other people’s histories and traumas.
But I realize that we are truly only complete if we are part of a broader network of nations, groups, backgrounds, and peoples who, despite their differences, share the common thread of humanity, empathy, and the desire for safety and self-determination.
And for the actual remembrance part, six quick things I've learned recently about the Holocaust:
(Graph is from a 1992 paper by Jewish demographer Sergio DellaPergola, called, "Major Demographic Trends in Jewry: The last hundred years.")
There are still fewer Jews on earth today than there were in 1939. There were 16.9 million Jews on earth before the Nazis began their industrialized genocide. 80 years later, there are 15.7 million.
Throughout the Holocaust, German corporations like Daimler and Mercedes-Benz requisitioned slave labor from Nazi camps. There were dozens of companies doing the same thing.
The Holocaust did not come out of nowhere. Germany had two "dress rehearsals." From 1904-1908, it set out to crush the Herero people in Namibia. It killed 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nema. It forced them on death marches into the desert. It created death camps. In one, “people were subject to rape, medical experimentation, no shelter, no food, in cages on the beach.” Doctors sent severed heads from these experiments back to Germany, to be used as examples of racial inferiority. One of those doctors went on to teach Dr. Josef Mengele.
The second "dress rehearsal": Before the death camps that were the Nazis' solution to the "Jewish Problem," Germany transported 70,000 autistic, chronically ill, mentally ill, and elderly people to death camps... and up to 200,00 more after that. They literally called them "useless eaters," because they couldn't make money for anyone.
Hyper-violent antisemitism also had a "dress rehearsal." From 1918-1921, up to 250,000 Jews were killed in incredibly violent pogroms across Ukraine. These included massive numbers of systemic, even public rapes, one common hallmark of genocides.
If we're calling those dress rehearsals, there was also a curtain call: After WWI, a fascist little rich man called Amin al-Husseini found that instead of being an up and coming leader in the Ottoman Empire, he was now expected to treat Jews as equals and share political and social power with them. So he spent twenty years inciting anti-Jewish massacres and becoming a MASSIVE Hitler fanboy. He attempted a pro-Nazi revolt across the Middle East, but only managed to incite the Farhud. Then he ran Arabic-language propaganda for the Nazis, and was so successful that between about 1940-1970, every single country in the Arab World, from Morocco through Afghanistan, ethnically cleansed 90% or more of its Jews. (The map below begins in 1948, but I can hand you a list of laws and pogroms that shows how much earlier it started.) As far as I can tell, this is the largest ethnic cleansing event in history, both in total population and in geographic range. And yet I had never heard of it before.
Off-topic, but bringing it back around to the two activists I started this post with:
I cannot recommend the two activists above enough, along with others in my Palestinians to platform tag. I beg everyone to google and follow people like Hamza Howidy, Moumen Al-Natour, Mo Ghaoui, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, Ahmed Al-Khalidi, Bassem Eid, and the Center for Peace Communications. It's past time to center and platform Gazan activists.
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