Holocaust stunt causes deep hurt
Video of car with ‘Holocaust in Gaza’ sign reposted on eve of Yom Hashoah sparks outrage.
A video of a vehicle driving through a heavily Jewish area of Melbourne with a sign reading “There is a Holocaust in Gaza” was posted to Instagram on erev Yom Hashoah this week.
The video was taken last year on Yom Kippur, and the woman driving the vehicle, anti-Zionist activist Veronica Sherman, who claims to be Jewish and Israeli, says she deliberately re-posted it in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The Jewish Community Council of Victoria said, “Words cannot express the deep hurt that is felt by our community to see this today. We utterly condemn this act of grave harm on behalf of the whole Jewish community, but particularly on behalf of Holocaust survivors who live among us.”
Sherman was contacted by The AJN and when asked if she could understand why people might feel hurt and intimidated by seeing the post she responded, “I actually don’t care at all. There’s so much about Jewish feelings and we need to stop centring Jewish feelings during a genocide.”
Sherman, who identifies as Jewish despite being raised a fundamentalist Christian in Sweden before making Aliyah to Israel at age 10, defended the action as a necessary protest against what she describes as genocide in Gaza.
Robert Gregory, president of the right leaning Australian Jewish Association, told The AJN, “Driving past Jewish institutions with such a message appears to have been a deliberate attempt to intimidate the Jewish community. Posting the video on Yom Hashoah was clearly intended to deepen that hurt.”
He believes there is an ongoing problem with individuals claiming to be Jewish in order to promote views that the overwhelming majority of Australian Jews completely reject.
When The AJN suggested to Sherman that the overwhelming majority of Jews reject the idea that Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza was a genocide, she said, “A lot of Jews will also completely dismiss international law. So … I don’t really have much patience for people who are denying a genocide.”
When asked if she intended to conduct similar actions in the future, Sherman did not want to say.