‘Dramatic rise in Holocaust denial’
Addressing a commemorative online panel on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, chaired by Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler, Israel’s new ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon lamented “a dramatic increase in Holocaust denial, distortion and revisionism”.
He also expressed concern at the rising tendency to compare “issues of political controversy and the Holocaust”, while noting it is Israel’s priority to promote Holocaust remembrance and education, “as well as efforts to combat antisemitism, racism and xenophobia”.
MK Sharren Haskel, who with fellow MK Amir Ohana, co-chairs the Knesset’s Australia Friendship Group, said Israel’s duty “to remember and remind the community and the world” of the Holocaust is encapsulated in the work of Yad Vashem.
But she added, “Jews now have a country that is capable of defending itself.”
Ohana reflected, “Zionism is the answer to racism … to the racism that our people have been suffering for so many years.”
Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz, Parliamentary Friends of Israel chair, said, “The Holocaust is a stark reminder of the brutality of humankind.”
Lauding ALP icon Herbert Evatt’s role in garnering international support for Israel’s founding in the wake of the Shoah, Parliamentary Friends deputy chair, Victorian Labor senator Kimberley Kitching, said, “The political spectrum is not linear, but rather it’s circular, and the far left and the far right meet … and I think that’s certainly the case with antisemitism.”
comments