2011 US Tour

In commemoration of international Holocaust Remembrance Day, please join Dr. Hajo Meyer in sharing the lesson of his experience in Auschwitz: Never Again for Anyone. Dr. Meyer will be joined in several locations by UC Berkeley professor, Dr. Hatem Bazian, chairman of the American Muslims for Palestine, and other social justice and Palestinian activists to discuss the urgency of this message in the United States and Canada today.

In the face of the on-going ethnic cleansing of Palestine, attacks and persecution of Muslim and Arab communities in the U.S. and Canada, and on-going attacks against the rights of other communities and immigrants, we assert a commitment to uphold the rights inherent to all people  against the application of “never again” to only a few.  

"The memory of the Jewish Holocaust should not be kept isolated from other atrocities in history. To remember what happened to the six million Jews ... serves no important purpose unless it arouses indignation, anger, action against all atrocities, anywhere in the world."  ~ Howard Zinn

DR. HAJO MEYER + DR. HATEM BAZIAN

 Other speakers included in this tour are Osama Abu-Irshaid, Hedy Epstein, and more. Please visit ampalestine.org to find out in which events Dr. Bazian will be participating.

TOUR SCHEDULE

Washington DC: Jan 25, 2011
New York: Jan 27, 2011
New Jersey: Jan 29, 2011
Toronto, Canada: Jan 31, 2011
Toronto, Canada: Feb 1, 2011
Milwaukee: Feb 3, 2011
Chicago: Feb 4 & 5, 2011
Twin Cities: Feb 8, 2011
Atlanta: Feb 10, 2011
New Orleans: Feb 13, 2011
Sacramento: Feb 16, 2011
SF Bay Area: Feb 17, 2011
Los Angeles: Feb 19, 2011

2010 Europe Tour 

 

Below are videos of two of the presentations made on the tour, one by Haidar Eid, one by Hajo Meyer.  There bios are below. Meyer presented at each of the locations on the tour.  Eid is in Gaza and was unable to travel or to join the tour in person. His presentation was taped because video conferencing was also not feasible.  The video below is one of four that were pre-taped and shown on the tour - despite power outages and disruption to internet access. The other videos will be available soon.  

The tour reached over 1200 people-most audiences were100-150 per a night. Eid and Meyer received a standing ovation at each.

Hajo Meyer

Dr. Hajo G. Meyer wasborn in 1924 in Bielefeld, Germany.Not allowed to attend school there after November 1938, he fled to the Netherlands,alone. In I944, after a year in the underground, he was caught and subsequentlysurvived 10 months at Auschwitz.He lives in the Netherlands,where he works as publicist and essayist. A member of IJAN, Hajo Meyer is onthe board of the Dutch group "A Different Jewish Voice", part of thecoalition of European Jews for Just Peace. He is the author of three books, onJudaism, Holocaust and Zionism.

"My great lesson from Auschwitz is: whoever wants to dehumanise any other, must first be dehumanisedhimself. The oppressors are no longer really human whatever uniform they wear."

Dr. Haidar Eid is a refugee whose parents were expelled from the Zarnouqavillage in 1948. Dr. Eid is a member of the PACBI Steering Committee and aco-founder of the One Democratic State Group.  He currently lives in Gaza,where he is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University.

"Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.' The UN, EU, Arab League and the international community by and large remained silent in the face of the atrocities committed by Apartheid Israel.  They are therefore on the side of Israel." 

Remembrance and Responsibility

A campaign to rejoin the Jewish history of resistance to genocide with those currentlystruggling for survival, self-determination, emancipation and liberation

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network's Remembrance Campaign aims to challenge the presentation of the Nazi Genocide in which the history of the decimation of Jews is disconnected from the millions of other victims who perished in the same war, even in the same camps. It also challenges the exceptionalizing, falsifying and exploiting of this memory in an effort to justify and dismiss the colonization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine.  Such exceptionalizing, along with the violence committed by a sanctified Israel in the name of all Jews, isolates the Jewish experiences of racism, displacement and mass murder, and separates Europe's history of Jewish persecution from other peoples' experiences with-and struggles against-persecution, racism and genocide. In opposition to this separatism, for us the history of the Nazi genocide demands that we never stand aside as any people faces such violence. And, far from an exception, the racism, sadism and dehumanization that facilitated the Nazi genocide, and governments' collaboration with it, has long roots in Europe's history of imperial conquest, slavery, genocide and Christian supremacy.

 Click here to read the rationale for IJAN's Remembrance Campaign, which the Never Again UK/Ireland tour is kicking off.

D'abord quelques remarques terminologiques.

Pour éviter toute discussion juridique inopportune, nous proposons de parler de massacres de masse au XXème siècle plutôt que de génocides ou decrimes contre l'humanité. Ces deux derniers termes ont été l'objet de définitions juridiques après la seconde guerre mondiale, le terme "crime contre l'humanité" ayant été défini dans le cadre du procès de Nuremberg . S'il peut être intéressant d'avoir une intervention sur les aspects juridiques, cela ne nous semble pas ici le point le plus important.

 Cliquez ici pour lire la logique derrière le IJAN France Never Again tour.

 Dates pour Paris, Lyon, et Strasbourg qui sera annoncée bientôt.

Mass murders of the 20th century

First off, some remarks on terminology.

To avoid unnecessary juridical debate, we propose to speak of mass murders of the 20th century rather than genocide or crimes against humanity. These two last terms have been the object of judicial definitions since after the Second World War; the term "crime against humanity" was defined during the Nuremberg Trials. While it might be interesting to intervene on these judicial debates, this seems to us to not be the most important point for the moment.

The use of the terms "genocides" and "crimes against humanity" leads to interminable debates between those who support the legal definitions in place and those who want to rely on the facts, the latter group divided between those who try to stick to the facts and those who would add their political or ideological interpretation, hoping that the use of a particular term would reinforce the political condemnation.

The Armenian Genocide of 1915 is an example. Speaking of "genocide" means for some that the Turks had planned this massacre, while for others it means less a planned massacre than a consequence of a deportation that the Turkish government had organized for security reasons, Armenians being considered potential allies of the Russian enemy. The question, then, is less to find the best term than to focus on the fact that there was a massacre. 

  Read the rest of the IJAN France rationale for the Never again tour