Apparently David Ward is a Lib Dem MP for some GNSH. I had never heard of this prize shit until today when he opined that Israel’s actions in Gaza could somehow be compared to the holocaust. It is a free country and this nonentity of an MP can say what he wants but coming two days before world Holocaust day this is offensive and factually just plain wrong. Actually it would be offensive and plain wrong at any time.
In the holocaust more than 75% of European Jews were rounded up and systematically murdered in Death camps. Gassed, shot, burned, often used for medical experiments, European Jewry was almost annihilated. That is a holocaust.
Israel operates no death camps in Gaza. It does not attack Gaza just because it hates Arabs. It seeks to take out military targets which folks, who do openly boast of their desire to inflict another holocaust on the Jewish people, deliberately locate in residential areas. Israel attacks military targets deliberately sites in residential areas because Hamas attacks civilians in Israel because it wants to kill Jews. Any Jew will do.
I am not saying that the Jewish state has always behaved admirably although the way that it trucks in hundreds of tonnes of aid to Gaza each month and just gets rocket attacks in return is pretty admirable in my eyes. But to compare military acts driven by self defence with the wholesale genocide of almost an entire people is just plain offensive. Ward has his facts wrong. He is thus ignorant as well as offensive.
Those who trivialise the holocaust by comparing it to events which patently are not a holocaust show no respect to those who dies and those who escaped. They dull the memories and conscience of the rest of us. They aid those who would like it to happen again.
In a free country Ward is entitled to his opinion. It is just that the prize shit wrong and he is offensive.