Holocaust Survivor Felt ‘Sick’ Seeing Israeli Spokesperson Wear a Yellow Star, Says Media ‘Guilty’ of Aiding Gaza ‘Genocide’
Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos condemned Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza on Thursday and said he felt “sick” seeing an Israeli spokesperson wearing a yellow star as “somebody who actually had to wear a yellow star” during the Second World War.
“To watch what goes on in Gaza is absolutely horrendous for me, and in lots of ways, the sufferings of the Palestinian people rhymes with the suffering that we had,” said Kapos, 88, during an interview on Good Morning Britain. “As you mentioned, my family was kind of separated [during World War II]. My mother was in charge of some girls in hiding, the girls were separate, so we weren’t together, and my father was taken in December ’44 to Bergen-Belsen [concentration camp].”
Criticizing UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to await “the final decision of the international courts” to see whether Israel’s conduct in Gaza “could be called a genocide,” Kapos pointed out that “under that kind of approach, you could never stop a genocide because by the time the official words come out, it would be over.”
Kapos also called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hostage arguments “a false claim,” arguing, “You do not free hostages by bombing.”
“I think the whole of the West is guilty, in a way, in not opposing this decisively and strongly enough, particularly the mass media that, if you like, has been lying by omission,” he said. “By not giving enough coverage and by the way they give coverage also at times. For example, taking Israeli statements unchallenged.”
Kapos recalled feeling “sick” after seeing an Israeli spokesperson wear a yellow star during an interview.
“I watched one particular program over the security council meeting where the Israeli spokesperson was about to start speaking and very theatrically put a yellow star on, and it made me feel sick because it was a misuse of the Holocaust,” said Kapos, adding that as “somebody who actually had to wear a yellow star, this was a misused symbolism.”
He continued, “And as for Netanyahu, not long ago he made a statement to say that ‘Never Again is Now,’ and this is another clear reference to the Holocaust and misuse of the Holocaust because [for] those who actually experienced it, ‘Never Again’ means something else. It means that never again perpetrating anything like that on any people, anywhere.”
In a March article, Kapos accused Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people and wrote that it was “vital for all of us in Britain to speak out now against our own government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.”
Other Holocaust survivors have also accused Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza, including Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier, who said last year that Israel was “engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
Watch above via Good Morning Britain.
