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Germany funds event equating Palestinian ‘Nakba’ with the Holocaust

“To understand the other’s pain: The Holocaust, the Nakba and the German Culture of Remembrance” is the title of an event hosted by the Goethe Institute in Tel Aviv.

By Atara Beck, World Israel News

The radical-left Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, in cooperation with the German government-funded Goethe Institute in Tel Aviv, is hosting a program on Wednesday equating the ‘Nakba’ with the Holocaust.

Titled “To understand the other’s pain: The Holocaust, the Nakba and the German Culture of Remembrance,” the event features, among others, Charlotte Wiedemann, author of the recently published book titled “Grasping the Pain of the Others.” According to the event promo, the author “pleads for a new empathetic remembering that does justice to different sides and promotes solidarity instead of victim competition.

“With regard to remembrance practices in Germany, she is convinced that an awareness of the colonial crimes of the imperial era must be developed, and this does not call into question the specificity of the Shoah.”

The event description reads:

“Almost 75 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, memory remains a politically controversial area. The Jews focus on the Holocaust, while the Palestinians focus on the fateful year 1948, when hundreds of thousands of them were victims of flight and deportation by Jewish fighters, a year known in Arabic as the ‘Nakba’ (disaster).”

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The Luxemberg Foundation is funded in part by the Die Linke (German for ‘The Left’) party in Germany.

“While the subject of European money funneled to Israeli left-wing groups in order to influence Israeli civil society and politics is nothing new, recent research reveals that not only is Germany the largest contributor to radical anti-Israel NGOs, but it is also providing the money in the most devious ways, including through foundations linked to German political parties,” JNS reported recently, crediting the Jerusalem-based Zionist organization Im Tirtzu for the research.

‘Put an end to it’

Im Tirtzu is planning a protest at the event Wednesday.

“The new [Israeli] government must reassess relations with the German government. We thank the Germans for assisting our defense, but it is not possible that at the same time Germany will promote, in bodies funded by the federal government, a narrative of Nakba and the Holocaust,” stated Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg.

“This is something that must stop immediately,” he said, adding that the anti-Israel propaganda “is related to Germany funding initiatives to change our soldiers’ open-fire policies, the funding of anti-Zionist organizations that persecute  IDF soldiers, and more.

“Put an end to it,” he demanded.

Merav Hajaj of The Choosing Life Forum, which represents bereaved families who plan to participate in the protest, said: “The German government dishonors the memory of the Holocaust, dishonors the fallen soldiers and the bereaved families. The Nakba is an invented concept whose purpose is to negate the existence of the State of Israel. We paid a very heavy price in the defense of this country. The German government must stop intervening in Israel’s right to exist!”