This essay appeared in the Feb. 17, 2009 issue of the NJIT Vector

Last week’s Vector reported on a student protest titled, “The New Holocaust” organized by NJIT’s Muslim Student Association. The purpose of the event was to bring awareness about the suffering of people in Gaza. I am deeply sympathetic to this suffering. However it is important to note that this suffering is due to Israel responding to the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza over the past several years on its communities, schools, colleges, hospitals, and other territory. These missiles have been fired on Israel AFTER she removed her army and all Israeli citizens from Gaza in 2005. (The Vector is incorrect in suggesting that Israel occupies Gaza. There is only one Israeli presumed to be in Gaza today and he is being held captive by the Hamas regime in Gaza).

While people have the right to express their views, the use of the term Holocaust to describe the events in Gaza is inappropriate and offensive. Because I am the child of a concentration camp survivor, and my grandparents, aunt, uncle and other relatives were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, I have an interest in the subject and the use and abuse of the term Holocaust. At best, the sponsors of the event are misinformed when it comes to the Holocaust, the situation in Gaza, or both. Holocaust education is part the New Jersey public school curriculum, but it seems that some students have not learned many of its basic facts.

The Nazis were responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews (among its 11 million victims). This constituted over 70% of Europe’s Jews and 40% of Jews worldwide. At its peak the Nazis were murdering over 10,000 Jews each day. Virtually all the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were civilians.

Here are just a few other aspects that people ought to consider in relating the situation in Gaza with the Holocaust:

	The Holocaust	Gaza
Background:	The Jews of Europe never declared or posed a threat to the existence of Germany.	The Hamas government in Gaza openly declares and acts on its goal of destroying Israel, especially through attacks on non-military targets.
Purpose:	Among their goals, the Nazis intended to exterminate the Jews of Europe and beyond.	Israel’s goal was to dismantle Hamas’s military infrastructure, stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza and the firing of missiles from Gaza into Israel.
Civilians:	The Nazis murdered the young and old while using able-bodied males and females as slave labor.	Israel focused on attacking an enemy hiding among the civilian population. Over half of the roughly twelve hundred Gazans who died from Israeli fire have been identified as members of Hamas or other terror organizations.
Science and Technology	Nazi scientists and engineers used their expertise to design and build gas chambers and conducted medical experiments on prisoners.	Israel used technology to pinpoint locations of enemy fire to minimize injury to civilians. Israel set up a clinic to treat Gazans wounded during the conflict.
Basic staples	Nazis herded Jews into ghettos and concentration camps with starvation rations.	Israel has been supplying basic foodstuffs, fuel, water and electricity for Gaza’s residents throughout the conflict.
Actions toward their victims/enemies:	Jews were rounded up, herded into ghettos, deprived of food, used as slave labor, shot and dumped into mass graves, gassed and cremated. Jews were used for inhumane medical experiments.	Israel dropped leaflets and texted people in danger zones warning them to leave. Israel imposed on itself a 3 hour per day ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza while Hamas continued to fire rockets – in some cases at crossings through which the aid passed.

A quick look at the issues indicates that the ideology and tactics of Hamas are far closer to those of the Nazis than are Israel’s. Comparing Israel’s actions against the Hamas regime (whose war crimes would take another article just as long as this one to detail) to the actions of the Nazis during the Holocaust constitute a perversion of history. It is an affront and an insult to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, to the survivors and to their descendants.

We are fortunate that at NJIT there are several professors with expertise on the Holocaust. I encourage NJIT students and particularly the Muslim Student Association to take advantage of this resource and learn more about the Holocaust. If the mission of the event was truly “to make people aware of the aggressions against human rights,” (as its board member is quoted as saying in the article) the group would be doing the campus community a service by highlighting the major human rights violations taking place today. For example, in Darfur, the government of Sudan has displaced millions and murdered and starved hundreds of thousands, raped women and pillaged and destroyed villages. In Congo, over 5 million people have died during the past decade of war. That these things still occur demonstrates that lessons of the Holocaust are as relevant as ever.

(Note: documentation of claims made in this essay can be found at www.egrandslam.com/references.txt )

Bruce Bukiet is Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology