A message to university vice-chancellors from a child of Holocaust survivors

Let me introduce myself. I am a child of Holocaust survivors. My mother survived Auschwitz and my father fought the Nazi war machine as a partisan during World War II. Ninety-eight percent of my extended family members perished in the Holocaust.

From a very young age, perhaps as early as four years old, I became acutely aware of the Holocaust. My mother informed me throughout her life of her experiences of difficult survival by telling me what she endured in the concentration camps through successive stories adapted appropriately for my different ages up to my age. adult.

My early awareness of genocide accelerated my sensitivity not only to the Jewish genocide, the Holocaust, but to all genocides and injustices in our world.

My universalization of the Jewish genocide during World War II naturally extended to support for reconciliation through negotiations and compromise between Israel and the Palestinian people.

In my adult life, I became an existentialist psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, partly because I believed that such a profession, particularly its theoretical knowledge, would contribute, through my various activities, to achieving a compromise between the Palestinians and Israel.

This should not have happened, and we are now witnessing a situation in which a war of Palestinian annihilation has continued since October 2023, with a high probability of mass starvation for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Palestinians from all ages.

In the current context, with this war against the Palestinians now in its seventh month, we are considering the possible destruction of the Palestinian nation. Massive famine, in addition to massive bombings and the loss of thousands of innocent people, is plaguing the Palestinian people.

This genocidal war waged by Israel against the Palestinians has resulted in the intentional killing of approximately 123 journalists, the destruction of all universities in Gaza, the deliberate killing of Palestinian academics and other cultural figures and workers, resulting in resulted, in short, in the destruction of the continuity of Palestinian culture.

This unimaginable crime of destruction of the culture of a people is reminiscent of the crime of destruction of the Jewish intelligentsia and other bearers of Jewish culture by the Nazis. This is undoubtedly an intentional destruction of the continuity of the Palestinian people as a nation and their identity through the destruction of their culture.

The present moment in history that represents this unimaginable cultural crime falls on all of us to prevent it with all our abilities and with all the will we can muster.

Here in Australia, as in a number of other countries, a misleading campaign has been carried out by unelected and unrepresentative organizations claiming to represent the Jewish community. Most of these organizations are outspoken defenders of successive Israeli governments and maintain close ties to Israeli intelligence agencies.

The main claim of these non-representative organizations is that opposition and protests against the Israeli army’s war in Gaza are led by “anti-Semites”, and that many students and other participants in the protests are “anti-Semitic”.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have spoken to many students and participated in protests, and not once have I heard or witnessed any anti-Semitic comments or behavior.

On the contrary: what I witnessed while discussing with many participants opposed to this war of annihilation is an unconditional openness to discussion and dialogue with a strong intention of mutual understanding and a very strong desire to contribute to a fair and just compromise on what has been a protracted conflict.

So I was deeply surprised and deeply disturbed when I learned that Australian vice-chancellors would follow in the footsteps of American university principals by calling on the police to dismantle student encampments at Australian universities.

The justification for this dismantling is the false cry of “anti-Semitism”.

There are a number of avenues to resolve this impasse between you, as Australian Vice-Chancellors, and the students in the camps who, I have also observed, enjoy enormous support across all universities from the student and university community for their courageous occupations.

The first step to solving this problem is for universities to divest from all projects that support this ongoing genocide.

The second, and of course closely linked to the first, is for all Australian vice-chancellors to better understand the historical and current context of this conflict and not to be misled by the very clever propaganda of the Israeli government.

The third is to meet and talk with students. Leave your desks and chat and converse with these very idealistic young students!

It is undoubtedly a great misfortune that many, if not most, university administrators are too easily convinced by the false and often quite crude narratives of Israeli propaganda departments. This is somewhat surprising and paradoxical, given that many of these administrators other than vice-chancellors, like yourself, are people with high academic qualifications and, presumably, a well-developed critical mind capable of analyze what is true and what is false.

I therefore call on you and urge you to support these peaceful and harmless protests and occupations against the genocide in Gaza, and to disengage from any investment or activity that harms the Palestinian people.

I would like to end by briefly recounting the main meaning of Tolstoy’s short novel, The death of Ivan Illich. In this short story, a senior civil servant on his deathbed tries to understand the meaning of his life. As his life force begins to leave him, he realizes that his conformity to the powers that be throughout his professional life has made him an unthinking cog in a system whose values ​​he questioned and found that they left something to be desired. Ivan Illich dies realizing that he led an unfulfilled life, a life he regretted leading, and a life that lacked meaning.

Don’t fall into this trap of absurdity and an unfulfilled life. You, the vice-chancellors of Australian universities, have now the opportunity to prove that your lives have meaning not only for yourselves, but also for the Australian people, by ensuring that this war of annihilation against the people Palestinian war ends and the means of continuing this war ends immediately.