Скачать или смотреть Africa's first Holocaust centre faces crisis of credibility over Gaza silence | Azad Essa

Azad Essa, senior reporter for Middle East Eye, says that silence lies at the heart of a crisis at the Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre. Created in 1999 to remember the Holocaust and teach the dangers of hate, bigotry, and silence, the centre now faces criticism for refusing to take a stand on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

As Israel kills and displaces hundreds of thousands, and engineers famine and mass suffering, several groups have petitioned the centre to acknowledge the atrocities. South African Jews for a Free Palestine have reminded the centre that “never again” was not meant for one people alone.

The centre claims it does not decide what constitutes genocide. But Essa says that by refusing to speak, it helps normalise the atrocities, admitting through silence that some lives are worth more than others.

He says Holocaust memory has long been politicised, sometimes used to fight racism but often weaponised to justify wars or defend Israel. Institutions that claim to study genocide, he notes, lose credibility when they refuse to apply the same standards to Palestinians.

Essa concludes that when remembrance lacks courage, it becomes performance. If “never again” cannot be applied to Palestinians today, he asks, then who is it for?

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