Another Piece of History’s Symbolism — Israel Recently Killed the Innocent Gaza Relatives of Dutchman Henk Zanoli — Whom They Had Honored in 2011 for Saving a Jewish Child from the Holocaust

© 2014 Peter Free

 

18 August 2014

 

 

From Jewish victims to Zionist oppressors

 

A short parable about humanity’s feet of murderous clay:

 

 

A 91-year-old Dutch man [Henk Zanoli] who was declared a Righteous Among the Nations — [in 2011, see significance here] — for saving a Jew during the German occupation on Thursday returned his medal and certificate because six of his relatives were killed by an Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip last month.

 

Zanoli’s father was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1941 due to his opposition to the occupation, and he subsequently died at the Mauthausen concentration camp in February 1945.

 

Henk Zanoli’s brother-in-law was executed because of his involvement in the Dutch resistance, and one of his brothers had a Jewish fiancée, who was also killed by the Nazis.

 

[In metaphorical payback for the Zanoli family’s good deeds during World War II . . .]

 

On Sunday, July 20 [2014], an Israeli fighter jet dropped a bomb on . . . [Henk Zanoli’s great niece’s husband’s] . . . family’s home in al-Bureij.

 

In the accompanying [award-returning] letter, addressed to [Israeli] Ambassador [to the Netherlands] Haim Davon, Zanoli began by describing the price his family paid for resisting the Nazis and their successful effort to save a Jewish child.

 

“Against this background it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel,” he wrote.

 

“The great- great grandchildren of my mother have lost their [Palestinian] grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli army ...

 

Amira Haas, Dutch nonagenarian returns Righteous Among the Nations medal after six relatives killed in Gaza, Haaretz (15 August 2014)

 

 

The moral? — Do we become what we profess to hate?

 

Hatred has no upside