Am I the only person who woke up to the news that today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as the first item on the CBC news?

The second item on news was that Italy’s right wing Giorgia Meloni government  passed a law to disallow pro-Palestinian demonstrations today in honour of Holocaust Remembrance Day.   Demonstrations can go ahead from tomorrow (Sunday) as long as they are severely limited – as is the case in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Hungary 

The third item on the CBC news was that Israel – home of the number one Holocaust museum Yad Vashem – has killed 26,000 Palestinians in Gaza in just over three months, and critically injured another 64,000.  According to the UN, Israel has also taken this opportunity to kill 361 Palestinians (including 92 children) in the West Bank right under the quisling Palestinian authority’s noses.  

Does Auschwitz excuse Israel’s murder of Gaza’s unarmed civilians?

My father-in-law, Max,  was a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz.  In Auschwitz, it’s estimated that 85% of the Jews, the homosexuals, the Roma and Communists were killed by the Nazis in gas chambers, or died of disease and starvation.   Max managed to stay alive– barely. He was a “cook” – who boiled potato skins, distributed food crumbs and floor sweepings to others.  I think about him – now dead for decades – and wonder what he would think about what Israel is doing today in his name.

Today marks the pious remembrance of the massacre of 10 million Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other prisoners just because of who they were.  Contrast that with the fifth biggest military power in the world today — Israel — murdering tens of thousands of helpless, unarmed Palestinian civilians, more than half children,  in a place half the size of Toronto.  Why exactly?

On average, 10 Palestinian children have lost one or both legs each day due to Israeli missile attacks since 7 Oct.

James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, here

Another point I’d like to make.  By now more than 1000 children have become amputees because Israeli missiles have crushed their homes on top of them, or because missiles have come so close they got caught in the firestorms around them.  On average 10 Palestinian children have lost one or both legs each day since 7 Oct.  

One thousand  is not a big number compared with 26,000 dead, and another 64,000 badly injured in Gaza. 

For a minute, just think of how disabled people are treated in Canada – 

• Unemployment among the disabled is 6.9% compared to 3.8% for the non-disabled. In 2022, those with a severe disability were employed at the rate of 50.4%, those with a very severe disability were employed at the rate of 26.8%. 
• Poverty is rampant. The average annual income of a disabled person is $43,000 which is 21% less than what the average non-disabled Canadian earns ($55,000). 
• Socially and environmentally, few Canadian communities cater to those with disabilities—or provide serious social supports for them. For more on this, see Kendall Worth’s blog Journalism for What Matters here.

Back to Gaza…

If you are an 8-year-old girl without an arm, or a leg – or without both – let’s think of your future in a now destroyed Gaza. Your chance for schooling leading to employment is nil. Two-thirds of homes in Gaza have been destroyed by Israel – there is no place to live but a tent or the streets.  The level of poverty, starvation and disease could kill you because you are in a fragile state, with no options. 

As I said at a Halifax rally for Independent Jewish Voices several weeks ago:

“Let us remember that today’s Palestinian 12-year-olds fearfully experiencing bombardment will be 16-year-olds in four years’ time, ready and willing to sacrifice themselves to avenge. If Israel means, as it swears, to root out the Hamas “terror machine,” does that include today’s 12-year-olds? Or tomorrow’s? Or those who will be that age in four years’ time?”

There is no rehabilitation service, no social worker, no place to go for help. Virtually no international aid is getting through Israel’s blockade– no wheelchairs, no hospital supplies, no food or water. 

And this is not merely for the length of time of Israel’s war — which Netanyahu has promised will last another year!  There is no indication things will improve for Palestinians – disabled or not – in this generation, or the one just coming up. 

Finally the best of us Canadians pride ourselves on accepting those who are different from ourselves. We want to integrate the disabled in the wider community.   We see how badly that has turned out.  Most  of the disabled in Nova Scotia live in warehouse-like conditions in for-profit institutions to which our government continues to shovel money.  54% of Nova Scotia’s nursing homes are for-profit.

Yes the government may pay for room, board and care, but the person with disabilities has to endure boredom — having little to nothing to do each day but watch television.  The disabled person has to put up with a barely tolerable diet, and few personal freedoms or opportunities.  As we saw during Covid – nursing homes were locked down for months, so there were few to no visitors allowed.  We saw residents visiting with relatives on tablet screens, or waving to them on the other side of glass windows. 

My late friend and inspiration, Jen Powley, with determination, guts and some like-minded friends, forced the NS government to retrofit a home for people with severe disabilities.  Four or five people, including Jen, were finally able to live in dignity, with 24-hour caregivers, in an apartment in south end Halifax.  Since then, the government has promised to rehouse the 500 disabled people now living in eight nursing homes around the province, and 1,500 adults who now live at home with ageing parents.

What happened to the 8-year old amputee?

Returning to Gaza – what will happen to the 8-year-old girl amputee? No home, maybe no parents (who were killed), no one to care for her, her social status precarious, her future is hopeless. She didn’t need to be a victim of Israel; she didn’t need to be without a limb. 

Israel’s Channel Two News had to retract “false and damaging allegations that an UNRWA ambulance was used to transport militants in Gaza…”

UNRWA News Release here

Predictably yesterday, in the lead up to Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel accused some UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) staff  of being involved in the attack on Israelis on 7 Oct.  In response to the accusations  — immediately with no proof — the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, Italy and Finland withdrew part of their humanitarian and financial assistance to Gazans.  This is not the first time Israel has deliberately falsely accused UNRWA of backing Hamas and terrorism.   Israel’s highest-rated TV news station, Channel Two, had to retract “ false and damaging allegations that an UNRWA ambulance was used to transport militants in Gaza on the night of 19 July 2014.”  In 2012, Channel Two had to apologise for its intentional smear which challenged UNRWA’s record of neutrality.  

Canada’s withdrawal of some of our support guarantees the prolongation of little food, no clean water, no medicine, no supplies and barely one hospital even partially functioning in Gaza at this point.  As MSF’s (Medecins Sans Frontieres) medical coordinator in Gaza reports,  

“People’s lives are at risk because of the lack of medical care. With Nasser and European Gaza Hospital almost inaccessible, there is no longer a healthcare system in Gaza.”

Dr Guillemette Thomas, MSF Medical Coordinator in Palestine

The IDF: the ‘Most Moral Army in the World’?

Yet Israel keeps on killing civilians with impunity.  In the last 24 hours, Israel has killed 174 more Palestinians in Khan Younis, a supposed “safe place”  and injured 310.

When we think about Holocaust Remembrance Day let’s not forget today’s ongoing genocide committed by Israel, and its army – “the most moral army in the world,” so Israel and its defenders insist.  

Featured artwork above: Death March (Czechowice-Beilsko, January 1945) by Jan Hartman (1926-2009). The gouache (pastels) on paper drawing from 1945 hangs at the Imperial War Museum, London, UK. For more about the artist, read this.