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Tel Aviv’s Chief Rabbi, a Holocaust Survivor Himself, Calls Syrian Crisis ‘a Holocaust’

Yisrael Meir Lau, who was liberated from Buchenwald when he was 8, has called for action

by
Jonathan Zalman
April 10, 2017
Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images
Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev (R) flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau (L) at the opening of the Permanent Exhibition SHOAH at former Nazi death camp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Block 27, in Oświęcim, Poland, June 13, 2013.Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images
Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images
Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev (R) flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau (L) at the opening of the Permanent Exhibition SHOAH at former Nazi death camp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Block 27, in Oświęcim, Poland, June 13, 2013.Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images

On Thursday, two days after an airstrike and chemical attack on rebel-held Khan Sheikhoun by Syrian government forces, which left over 70 people dead and injured more than 500, Tel Aviv’s chief rabbi spoke up. Speaking to Army Radio, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the current chairman of Yad Vashem who is also the former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, said, “What is happening in Syria is [also] a holocaust. Not [just] from today, for six years a holocaust has fallen on them.”

Some estimates state that nearly 500,000 Syrians, including more than 20,000 children, have died from the country’s civil war, which still rages on after more than six years.

As a child, Lau was liberated from Buchenwald. He was one of the camp’s youngest surviving prisoners. He was 8 years old.

Lau called for an emergency Knesset session and for Israel and the rest of the world to “put aside political considerations that may be keeping them from intervening in the civil war, joining others in Israel who have called for action in the wake of the deadly attack,” reported The Times of Israel.

“We do not enjoy bloodshed, this is human blood,” said Law. “Your neighbor does not have to share your nationalism or worldview; he was created in the image of God.”

Lau statement came hours before President Trump bombed the Syrian air base that the U.S. says is responsible for the chemical attacks.

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.