Analysis, Middle East, Side Feature

European Leaders Once again Display their Hypocrisy in Holocaust Memorial Event

European leaders gathered in Jerusalem at the end of January to commemorate the Holocaust and battle anti-Semitism, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. Prince Charles, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen were among the leaders who attended the World Holocaust Forum at the city’s Yad Vesham Holocaust remembrance center.

Comment:

It is not every day Western leaders get together. However, they converged in occupied Jerusalem to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In an event claimed to commemorate atrocities committed against the human race, it hosted several speakers who are not exactly known for their human values.

Among the speakers at the event was Russian President, Vladimir Putin, an infamous war criminal who is responsible for massacres and atrocities committed against Muslims in Chechnya and Syria. He is also well-known of assassinating and torturing political opposition and critical journalists. Another speaker with a war criminal badge on him was the Prime Minister of the Zionist entity, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is responsible of mass killings in Gaza and oppression against Muslims in the whole of Palestine.

Furthermore, the event did not take place in Poland where the Auschwitz atrocities were committed, even though many of the victims were Polish. It was rather held in the occupied Palestine! Remembering the victims of genocide in a state, which was constructed on a genocide committed against the indigenous people of Palestine, is not only hypocritical. It is to mock the victims!

The disgrace is worsened by the fact that war criminals like Benjamin Netanyahu, who is responsible of the murder of thousands of innocent women, elderly and children in Gaza, was the face of the event. Western leaders show their true colors every time they gather with war criminals like Putin and Netanyahu. Their behavior, however, becomes totally repulsive when this convergence happens in a so-called humanitarian event, as their hypocrisy becomes unbearable to witness.

A memorial usually should have the purpose of learning lessons from tragic historical events. What lessons have Western leaders learned from the Holocaust? Have they changed since the 1930’s or 1940’s where all European countries either participated in genocide or refused to let refugees in their countries who were fleeing from genocide? Not the slightest. They have directly or indirectly participated in genocides such as that in Bosnia and Rwanda. And now they are doing the same in Yemen and Syria. Western countries today are either involved, directly or indirectly, in the mass killings in these two Muslim countries, or they are refusing to let refugees in, leaving them to die. This is exactly what they also did during the Holocaust.

Nothing really has changed. Their hypocrisy has only become bigger and the cynicism of the Capitalist world has become more evident. When Muslims, by the will of Allah, establish their Islamic State and liberate Palestine they will via their Islamic humane behavior, which is dictated by the Quran, show the world how justice really looks like. And how to, in practice, remember those who have been brutalized by tyrants and imperial nations throughout history by supporting the weak and standing up against the oppressors as Allah (swt) commands: يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاءَ لِلَّهِ “O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah.” [Al-Nisaa: 135]

 

Taimullah Abu-Laban