On the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Senator Scott Ryan writes in The Australian Jewish News, that anti-Semitism remains a global problem and is disguised behind the cloak of the BDS movement, UN decisions and even TV shows. See the original article The oldest hatred in modern attire here
January 27 represents the 68th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust are ageing and passing away, so each anniversary becomes increasingly important as all we are left with is memories. Elie Wiesel said, “If anything can, it is memory that will save humanity”, but the battle against fading memory is becoming more and more difficult.
The uniqueness of the Holocaust must be remembered and commemorated in new ways as time goes on, for the Holocaust represented the lowest point in western civilisation. It also seemed to be the logical endpoint of anti-Semitism: the oldest of prejudices that sadly is rearing its head again today, albeit in new guises.
Last year, Australians witnessed ugly attempts by leftist radicals to block access to Israel-owned, locally-staffed businesses. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was a supposed protest against Israeli Government action, but in truth was partly a vehicle for ancient hatreds.
Proof of this was written in black and white in a BDS manual printed by Australians for Palestine last year and circulated to all MPs. Among the host of fallacious and offensive assertions, there was one which drew a link between Israel’s war of independence and defending the Holocaust. It stated: “Just as Jews expected to Germany to accept responsibility for what it did in the Holocaust so, too, will the refugee issue continue to fester and frustrate attempts to bring peace to the region …”
To draw such parallels is to diminish the horror of that unique historical tragedy. As a non-Jew, I have no personal understanding of these events. But as someone who has studied the Holocaust and walked the pathways of Auschwitz, I find it offensive for there to be any attempt to equate events in such a way. And as first-hand accounts dwindle, such moral equivalence becomes easier, for it is based on misunderstanding and, sadly in some cases, intentional misrepresentation.
Never before had an allegedly civilised nation attempted an elimination of an entire people. Never before had all the gains of the renaissance, enlightenment and industrial revolution been put to such evil use. But these were only the means; the driving force behind the Holocaust was not new, it was thousands of years old, it is the oldest of hatreds.
This oldest of hatreds is expressed differently in the 21st century – neither in grotesque caricatures nor false documents, although sadly these remain prevalent in certain parts of the world. Today, different standards continue to be applied to the world’s only Jewish state – Israel –than to its neighbours.
Why are those who protest against alleged Israeli oppression of Palestinians not permanently protesting outside the Syrian embassy against the ongoing cruelty of the Assad regime? Where are the pages of bile in certain newspapers and on certain radio stations about Assad’s continued oppression and relentless grip on power against the will of his people and of the international community? The fact that we do not see these does betray the agenda of some: to campaign against Israel itself.
Then, of course, we have the Goldstone report – whose eventual repudiation was given none of the coverage that its initial release obtained – the three Durban conferences and the United Nation’s Human Rights Council singling out Israel for condemnation ahead of serial human rights abusers such as Sudan, Iran and North Korea. And now we have a series like The Promise broadcast last month on SBS.
SBS was founded by a Liberal government with a mandate to inform, educate, entertain and reflect Australia’s multicultural communities. As the Executive Council of Australian Jewry pointed out in its letter to SBS, the station maintains a code of practice that includes a clause to “avoid programming which clearly condones, tolerates or encourages discrimination”.
I will not pre-empt the outcome of the investigation by SBS as to whether it breached the code by broadcasting The Promise, but I do have a concern that only one side of the story is shown.
SBS needs to explain what it plans to do to ensure another perspective is seen. After all, I have little doubt that when scheduling decisions are made about other sensitive issues, the context in which they are broadcast is taken into account.
If a program were seen to disseminate a hostile view of one group in the community would SBS broadcast it, even if it could be defended as factual? If The Promise adds to an ongoing campaign to misrepresent and vilify Israel then this context is important, particularly when requesting that alternative views be broadcast. Failing this test could lead to allegations the network is not meeting its goal of impartiality.
Reflecting on the horrors of the Holocaust this week, it is not just the atrocities that we should remember, it is also the lessons that remain unlearned or, as Elie Wiesel put it, the memories to save humanity.