After being briefed on details of Hamas massacres, Natan Sharansky dub October 7th the ‘biggest pogrom in modern history,’ says the international community must back annihilation of Hamas.
By World Israel News Staff
Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Advisory Board Chair and former prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky has called on the international community must stand behind Israel’s efforts to eradicate the Hamas terrorist organization.
Speaking at a special briefing Wednesday highlighting the October 7th massacres perpetrated by Hamas, titled “Human Rights in Crisis: Exposing Hamas’ War Crimes Against Israeli and Palestinian Civilians,” Sharansky said there is “no choice” but to annihilate Hamas.
“This was the biggest pogrom in modern history, and the biggest anti-Semitic event since the Holocaust,” Sharansky said. “The free world cannot accept that the people who did these crimes can keep existing. We have no choice. We have to destroy Hamas.”
Other participants included IDF Maj. (Res.) Ben Wahlhaus, NGO Monitor Founder and President Gerald Steinberg, Nova music festival survivor Natalie Sanandaji, and Yoav Shimoni, grandson of Bracha Levinson, who was murdered in her Nir Oz home by Hamas. The event was moderated by CAM CEO Sacha Roytman Dratwa.
In her remarks, Sanandaii delivered a heartfelt message for Palestinian supporters around the world.
“The rallies that you’re doing right now is not what this war is about,” she said. “This war is not about Palestine. Hamas is not pro-Palestine. Hamas is just as complicit in the deaths of innocent Palestinians as they are in the deaths of all these innocent Israelis. Anyone who is going out onto the streets with a Palestinian flag, this is not the time. This war is about a terrorist organization killing innocent people. Killing innocent people does not free Palestine. This is not the path to that, this is not the way you do it.”
Shimoni described how he and his family learned of the death of his beloved grandmother, Bracha, through a gruesome video posted on her Facebook account by her killers.
“My sister flagged in our family group chat that my grandmother had posted a video on Facebook, so we immediately went to her Facebook and saw that there was a video of her lying on her living room floor, covered in blood, with terrorists standing above her,” he said.
“That was two to three hours before Israel and the news media announced the terrorist infiltrations into Israel, so for the first few hours we were all in disbelief.”
Bracha Levinson’s body has yet to be identified, meaning that Shimoni and his family have not been able to start sitting shiva, the formal seven-day period of Jewish mourning.
“It’s been a horrific week and a half,” Shimoni said.
Steinberg called out intentional efforts by global institutions and NGOs, amplified by sympathetic media outlets, to “turn Israel into the image of the world’s worst human rights violator,” as seen on Tuesday in the rush to denounce and vilify Israel for the deaths at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza for which it was not responsible.
“This is not just a tactic, it’s a strategy that is modern antisemitism,” he said. “They manipulate the language and frameworks of human rights which were created in the wake of the Holocaust, and this is a form of Holocaust inversion.”
Maj. (Res.) Walhaus, who serves in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, noted, “Israel now is at war, and our war is against Hamas.”
“But Hamas’ war is a war against civilians. It started with this brutal massacre, and the abduction of 200 Israeli citizens who are being held hostage in Gaza.”
“They are firing rockets continuously and indiscriminately into Israeli population centers. And at the same time they are using their own population to protect those rockets, to hide their military operations, to evade attacks by the IDF, and to exploit any civilian harm for their own purposes.”