Just a week into the ceasefire to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza, our public broadcaster is sanitizing Israel before our very eyes.

Last week started with a flurry of CBC programs that centred around yet another International Holocaust Remembrance Day – coming up on Mon. 27 Jan.   One part of The Current last Wednesday featured an interview Bonny Reichert, a chef and cookbook writer who spoke for nearly twenty minutes about how her 94-year-old father (a Holocaust survivor) loves food and family gatherings around food.  She also discussed her personal sense of insecurity and terrible fears around the Holocaust and Poland; as a child and young person, she worried constantly about it.

Reichert’s elderly father arranged a family trip to Poland which helped her deal with her anxiety around the Holocaust. In the CBC interview, Bonny wove in her father’s history; he had seen almost his relatives disappear or go to their deaths in Birkenau. At the age of 20, he arrived in Canada and settled in Edmonton, where he owned and operated restaurants. She divulged an early memory was her asking her dad to wash off the tattoo on his forearm; he told her it could not be done.   

“Half of my 6-12 cases a day, starting at 8 or 9 in the morning and finishing at one in the morning, were children.”

Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, British-Palestinian plastic surgeon operating in Gaza hospitals

Eighty years after the Holocaust, it is still important to remember that event. But, given that the program came but days after a genocide ceased, the interview on The Current suggested once again that Jews and Jewish suffering trump all others’ suffering. 

From 47,000 to 80,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in its 15-month war on Gaza. More than 10,000 Palestinians are missing, buried under the rubble of their homes which were destroyed by Israel. More than 21,000 Palestinians are locked in Israeli prisons. Even Ronen Bar, chief of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, insists that prison conditions are terrible and conduct [of guards] “borders on abuse.” Estimates are that 21,000 children are either missing, buried in the destroyed buildings.  Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, nearly 40,000 Palestinian children lost their parents. Forty percent of Gazans have opened their families to orphaned children. Since October 2023, at least 10 children each day have had one or both legs amputated.  Think about that for a minute—almost 4700 children have lost their limbs over the last 15 months.  British-Palestinian surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah who has worked in Gaza for weeks over the course of the war said, 

“Half of my 6-12 cases a day starting at 8 or 9 in the morning and finishing at one in the morning were children. My estimate is that there are now between 700 and 900 with amputations of limbs and some have multiple limbs amputated.”  

Human Interest: the Holocaust

Yet as we move closer to International Holocaust Memorial Day, we know there will be more “human interest” stories about the Holocaust and more stories about antisemitism in Canada all in an effort – consciously or unconsciously – to centre the Holocaust, Jewish suffering, and the starting new lives in Canada, post WWII (World War II).  What of the Palestinians? Fewer than 620 Gazans have arrived under the Temporary Resident Pathway for Palestinian Extended Family in Gaza . A mere thousand more have been approved to come here, if they can escape Gaza, can afford to travel through Egypt and fly to Canada.   Compare that with 936,293 visas Canada issued to Ukrainians who wanted to stay here for the duration of the war.  Only 22.5% of those visa holders ever arrived here in Canada.

To see how International Holocaust Memorial Day was treated last year, I went back to the 27 Jan., 2024 Global-TV news coverage of the day.

First item on the Global evening national news:

“Today the world paused reflecting and remembering one of the darkest times in human history, paying tribute to six million Jewish people and others persecuted and murdered  by the Nazis during the second World War.  

“International Holocaust Remembrance Day which also coincides with the 79^th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp where more than one million Jewish people were killed.

“Global leaders are urging rejection of antisemitism and hate in a world that seems to be growing more divided.” 

Then the news reader went on to say that half the hate crimes in Toronto have been against Jews. But what happened to the Jews? According to researcher Dr Sheryl Nestel — not much. According to her report The Use and Misuse of Antisemitism Statistics in Canada, at least 84% of the crimes were non-violent, and consisted of general mischief and some harm to property.  In comparison, when we look at hate crimes against other groups, we see that there were 113 violent attacks on Black people; 70 attacks on Muslim people and 50 attacks against Jews.  

Certainly, a goodly number of these “crimes” were classified as such under the influence of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism, wherein seven of the eleven examples involve robust criticism of the State of Israel.

The first twenty minutes of the newscast  included an interview with a Holocaust survivor, old photos, photos of bullet holes in the two Toronto Jewish schools which had shots fired at them, and photos of the red water-based paint marking the windows of Indigo’s flagship Toronto store.

A year ago, on 27 Jan. 2024, Israel’s war on Gaza was in its fourth month.  According Reliefweb, a humanitarian information service provided by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

• More than 4366 Palestinians had been killed by the IDF
• 115 Palestinians were killed by Jewish settlers
• 657 Palestinians were seriously injured in Gaza and the West Bank
• 33% of all injuries were caused by live ammunition, compared to only 9% in the first nine months of 2023. 
• 14 out of 36 hospitals were partially functioning at that time. Those functioning operated at three times their capacity
• MSF reported no surgical capacity at most Gazan hospitals; no orthopedic surgeons available
• 18,000 Palestinians were sheltering at the time in Nasser hospital
• Between 7 Nov and 24 Jan. 2024-25, there were 12 incidents of attacks on EMT workers (emergency medical teams). 

The day before Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024, the International Court of Justice advised that Israel’s actions plausibly amounted to genocide.    Among other things the ICJ outlined –

• Israel had to ensure that its military did not commit genocide
• Israel had to provide basic services and humanitarian assistance to mitigate the horrible conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip
• Israel was supposed to prevent and punish those inciting the public/military to murder Palestinians in Gaza

No one is saying not to pay tribute to the Holocaust.

Holocaust Remembrance: A way to divert attention from Israel’s destruction of Gaza

I’m saying we cannot allow Israel and its supporters to gaslight us – to want us to commemorate the Nazi genocide and to remain silent and complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.  

Image at the top: Palestinian children celebrate the ceasefire in Nuseirat refugee camp near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza [credit: Moiz Salhi/Anadolu]. Click here to watch short video of Palestinians returning to Nuseirat since the ceasefire, in last few days.

Nota Bene:

Jenny in IJV Canada wrote me: “for another example of this, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has a new show on Auschwitz until September 2025. There is a full page ad for this exhibit in either this weekend’s Globe and Mail or Toronto Star. One of the sponsors I remember is the Azrieli Foundation.”

On until September 2025.