Rick Sahar, a former board member of the New Zealand Holocaust Centre, soldier in the IDF, and son of concentration camp survivors had me on his Alternative Jewish Voices radio show to talk about last week’s decision to include the Holocaust in the New Zealand school curriculum. The op ed that follows grew out of the conversation.
COMMENTARY: By Jeremy Rose and Rick Sahar
Professor of Holocaust studies at the Hebrew University Amos Goldberg, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a former deputy director of Mossad, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israel’s leading human rights group B’Tselem, a UN commission of inquiry and UN special rapporteurs have all described Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
One of the panel of experts advising the ICC was Theodor Meron, an Israeli survivor of a Nazi labour camp and leading international jurist.
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And yet the New Zealand Holocaust Centre — an organisation set to play a leading role in developing a new year 10 Holocaust curriculum — remains shtum.
This week the centre was to have hosted a talk by Israel’s former honorary consul to New Zealand, David Zwartz, on “Hitler and the Arab Connection.”
Thankfully the talk was cancelled. It was an offensive choice of topic on many levels.
That there were some Arab leaders who supported the Nazis is uncontroversial; as is the fact that there were many prominent Arab leaders who opposed fascism, some of whom, at great personal risk, saved Jewish families from the Nazis during the occupation of North Africa.
Sadly an outrage
That the Holocaust Centre chose to highlight the former during an ongoing genocide being committed by Israel is an outrage that sadly doesn’t come as a surprise to us.
On its webpage the Holocaust Centre says its work “bridges history with the present day, inspiring New Zealanders to stand against prejudice, discrimination, and apathy”.
The centre can’t be accused of apathy, but by promoting talks like the one mentioned while Israel is committing war crimes against Arabs, it is stoking prejudice and engaging in genocide denial.
The Jewish world is currently divided between those who believe “never again” means never again to anyone and those willing to either turn a blind eye or actively support Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza and pogroms and ethnic cleansing of those in the illegally occupied territories.
The Holocaust Centre is firmly in the latter group and has a track record of supporting Israel no matter what crimes are being committed by it.
The idea that the centre is to play a pivotal role in writing a new Holocaust curriculum and that New Zealand teachers will travel to Israel to learn about genocide is as ironic as it is offensive.
It will also feed into the antisemitic trope that Jews control the narrative.
Horrified by Gaza crimes
Kiwi teenagers aren’t empty vessels waiting to be filled with one-sided stories of good versus evil. Like young people the world over, many of them will be aware of and horrified by Israel’s crimes in Gaza, the occupied territories and Lebanon.
There’s a very real risk that a curriculum that turns a blind eye to an ongoing genocide will be dismissed in its entirety by many of our most politically engaged rangatahi as propaganda and lies.
The Holocaust and its place in the history of genocides is far too important to be used as a geopolitical football.
Israel’s former foreign minister Abba Eban — who quipped “there’s no business like Shoah business” — said: “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is no distinction at all.”
That’s nonsense of course but it’s been a high effective strategy.
For decades the Holocaust — one of history’s most horrific crimes — and accusations of antisemitism have been weaponised to shut down voices supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and basic human rights.
Israel has gone into overdrive with its hasbara — literally explaining but more accurately propaganda — campaign, spending US$1 billion since 2023.
A meaningful genocide curriculum
There are many Jewish thinkers, writers, activists and jurists who would be included in any meaningful genocide curriculum.
First and foremost, Raphael Lemkin, who created the word to describe both the Shoah and the Armenian genocide.
The great polymath and orthodox Jew, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who declined the Israel Prize after calling on young Israelis to refuse to serve in the IDF.
He warned the occupation would lead to fascism and the birth of a “Judeo-Nazi” mindset. A prophetic warning if there ever was one.
And Andrew Feinstein, a former anti-Apartheid activist, ANC MP and son of an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, who has lectured widely on the topic.
He recently tweeted: “Between October 7, 2023, and August 2026 Israel killed: 73,387 Palestinians; 21,700+ children; 11,200+ women; 5,200+ elderly; 35,000+ men; 260+ journalists; injured 174,250+, and thousands still remain under the rubble. Call it by its name: genocide.”
Holocaust denial is a terrible thing; denying an ongoing genocide that can and must be stopped is far worse.
Rick Sahar is a former board member of the Holocaust Centre, served in the IDF, and is the son of concentration camp survivors. Jeremy Rose is a Wellington journalist whose grandparents fled Nazi Austria with his enfant mother in 1939. Both are members of Alternative Jewish Voices. This article is republished from Jeremy’s substack Towards Democracy with permission.
