Human Rights NGO Urges Goethe Institute to Cancel Hosting the Event and Urges Israeli PM Lapid to Demand it beCanceled
LOS ANGELES – The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO, isdenouncing an upcoming event taking place on Wednesday, November 9, in Tel Aviv, Israel entitled: Understanding the Other Side’s Pain: The Shoah, the Nakba, and the German RemembranceCulture. Sponsored by the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, the event will take place at the Goethe Institute on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associated dean and director of global social action at SWC, issued the following statement:
“It is despicable that any German would utter Shoah and Nakba in the same breath. There is nothing wrong with exploring the feelingsof Palestinians, but to link the Palestinian-Israel conflict in any way to Nazi Germany’s ‘Final Solution’ that murdered 6 million innocent Jews, among them 1.5 million Jewish children, is amonstrous insult to the victims of the Shoah, to the Jewish State of Israel, to survivors of the Shoah and to historic truth.
Convening such a discussion in Israel -- on the anniversary of Kristallnacht -- by the foundation of a left wing German politicalparty, at the respected Goethe Institute, is an odious provocation. The SWC calls on the Goethe Institute to cancel its hosting of the event and urges Israel Prime Minster Lapid to demand thatthis event be canceled. Both Germany and Israel have worked for decades to forge a new relationship out of the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust and have developed strong ties. But no German, whatevertheir political affiliation has the right to be involved in belittling the Shoah or to further facilitate the big lie that Israel treats Palestinians the same way the Nazis treated Jews”