Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an anti-Zionist Jewish group based in Berkeley, California, recently released a statement saying that Israel's actions in Gaza amount to "perpetrating a holocaust."
"Many of us have parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who survived or perished in Nazi death marches and we have all grown up in the shadow of the Nazi holocaust. The State of Israel is currently perpetrating a holocaust, the deliberate mass slaughter of Palestinian people, with weapons provided by the United States," JVP said in the statement while comparing images of the Holocaust with photos of present-day Gaza on social media.
This comes as many Palestinian peace advocates have similarly referred to the Israeli military's actions in Gaza as "Holocaust," leading to accusations of antisemitism. This appears to be the first major statement from a Jewish group that similarly referred to Israel's war in Gaza using a term originally used to refer to the genocide against Jews during World War II.
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza last October, Israeli forces have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, half of whom were women and children, and destroyed schools, mosques, hospitals and United Nations-run refugee shelters.
In addition to targeting civilian structures, Israeli forces have targeted journalists, medical workers and UN and international aid workers.
While the official death toll from the Gaza Health Ministry is just over 43,000 Palestinians, some estimates have placed the death toll at more than 186,000 already.
Israeli forces recently launched a weekslong siege on parts of northern Gaza, with reports stating that Israeli forces have ethnically cleansed half of the Jabalia neighborhood. (Related: The "General's Plan:" Israel carries out ethnic cleansing campaign on trapped and starving people in northern Gaza.)
"The photos and videos coming out of North Gaza are a terrifying echo of all-too-familiar images of European ghettos and Nazi concentration camps in the 2nd World War," JVP said. "Today we stand with our ancestors at our backs, in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings, demanding an immediate weapons embargo and an end to genocide - we will not act with indifference toward Palestinian suffering."
JVP also called on survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants to sign its statement, "to stand up and stop genocide.
Holocaust survivors calling out Israel's genocide in Gaza
Many Holocaust survivors have answered the call to speak up against the genocide in Gaza. One of them is Stephen Kapos, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor from Budapest who now lives in London.
According to Kapos, Israel is rekindling the horror of the Holocaust.
"I am here because I protest against the use of the memory of the Holocaust as a justification for perpetrating the same in Gaza as a genocide against the Palestinian people," Kapos, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, said during a pro-Palestine rally in London.
Apart from the human cost of Israel's war on Gaza, Kapos strongly condemned the devastation of the besieged enclave's infrastructure, including housing, medical facilities and educational institutes.
Figures show how Israel devastated Gaza's infrastructure, internally displaced nearly the entirety of the population, and left most to face famine conditions and acute shortages of medical aid.
"Not only is there heavy indiscriminate bombardment, but even blowing up important institutions like universities after they had been occupied, when there was no Hamas anywhere near and yet they were destroyed, it's quite clearly a message that they wish to obliterate Gaza as a place to live at all," said Kapos.
"It is, in fact, the last stages of ethnic cleansing by means of genocide."
Watch this video of an Israeli ambassador being confronted with data showing how Israel is deliberately starving Gaza.
This video is from the Cynthia's Pursuit of Truth channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
Israel's FINAL SOLUTION for Gaza is genocide followed by annexation into Greater Israel.
Humanitarian CATASTROPHE: Israeli blockade has deliberately left over 90% of Gaza starving.
HORROR: Israeli troops live streamed war crimes and genocidal acts, documentary reveals.
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