An anti-Israel Holocaust survivor and like-minded groups plan to hold a protest against the Jewish state on Sunday outside of the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills, Mich.
“We demand the Holocaust museum take a stand against genocide and oppression, make a statement supporting a ceasefire and divest from companies funding Israel’s human-rights violations,” according to a flier that Jewish Voice for Peace and others shared on social media.
The event, organized by the Coalition Against Genocide—whose website appeared to be last updated in 2014—is guilty of “scapegoating U.S. Jews and the Zekelman Holocaust Center by holding them responsible for another nation’s actions is antisemitism,” the Anti-Defamation League’s Michigan office stated. “Full stop.”
Sacha Roytman, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, stated that protesting outside the museum, “a place honoring the memory of Holocaust victims and survivors, is blatant antisemitism.”
“The museum tells the story of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis,” he added. “It has no connection to current Middle East conflicts or U.S. foreign policy, and by targeting this memorial the demonstrators are revealing their true colors: unadulterated hatred of Jews masked as pro-Palestinian activism.”
Rene Lichtman, 86, a Holocaust survivor, told the New York Post that he would welcome pro-Israel counter-protesters showing up at the event that he organized.
“I have no problems with a good fistfight between these fascists and our people,” he said.
“There’s nothing holy about a museum. They just invent that. This is where you go and you recite the names of all the Jews that have been killed,” Lichtman, who counts Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) a friend, told the Post. “It’s just a building with a bunch of barbed wire around it. But the values that it teaches are important.”
