Gabor Mate, a renowned Jewish doctor and writer who survived the Holocaust, recently stated in a TV broadcast regarding the events in Gaza, "What's happening in Palestine is the longest ethnic cleansing operation of the 20th and 21st centuries, and it is still ongoing."
Mate expressed that what is currently happening to Palestinians by Israel is akin to the genocide inflicted upon his own people in the past. The Jewish doctor, who survived the Holocaust, remarked that visiting the places where Palestinians live brings tears to his eyes every day.
Here are the key notes from the televised speech of Dr. Mate:
"I am a Jew who survived the Holocaust. My grandparents, my peers were killed in Auschwitz. Most of my family was killed. That's my history.
I grew up ashamed of being Jewish. After the war in Hungary, I was still being bullied for being Jewish. I remember a friend coming to my rescue, saying, 'Leave him alone. It's not his fault he's Jewish; it's his father's fault.
In my youth in Canada, I became a Zionist. The barbed wire of Auschwitz was replaced by borders and a powerful army for the Jewish state.
I found this liberating. Believing in this dream was exciting. Then I learned that it was not at all like that. To realize the Jewish dream, you had to make hell for the local people. Israeli, Jewish Israeli historians have shown us without a doubt. The expulsion of Palestinians was ruthless and brutal. And it was intentional. That's why they call it Nakba, 'The Great Catastrophe' in Arabic. Now in Canada, there's a law; you cannot deny the Holocaust. I don't believe in such laws, by the way. But in Israel, you cannot talk about Nakba.
Even though it's at the core of the country... I visited the occupied territories during the first Intifada... I cried every day for two weeks because of what I saw. The brutality of the occupation, the harassment. Or the cutting down of Palestinian olive trees. Withholding water, humiliations...
It continued to worsen... It was the longest ethnic cleansing operation of the 20th and 21st centuries. And it's still going on...
As a Jew, I can fly to Tel Aviv tomorrow and claim citizenship under the 'Right of Return' law. But my Palestinian friend Hanna Kawas in Vancouver; despite being born in Jerusalem, she can't even visit there."
