Shraga Elam says a bloody revenge by Hamas for the assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi would give Israel a pretext to escalate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. He calls on Palestinians and / or Jews to demonstrate wearing a variant of the yellow Star of David, which symbolizes the Nazi crimes against the Jews, in protest against Israel's abuse of the memory of the Nazis' victims and to draw attention to similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel.

It is clear that a bloody revenge by Hamas for the assassination of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, and his successor, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, will provide the Israeli military junta with a welcome pretext to escalate further the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

What are now needed desperately are effective non-violent activities to try to stop the Israeli aggression and war crimes.

One potent form of non-violent activity is for Palestinians and/or Jews to demonstrate wearing a variant of the yellow Star of David, like the one shown on the right. A wave of such demonstrations, with good media coverage, would be more effective than thousands of suicide bombers.

There is hardly any other sign symbolizing more strongly the Nazi crimes against the Jews than this image, which was introduced in the late 1930s as a step in the ever-escalating process of ghettoization that culminated in the systematic annihilation of Jews in the 1940s.

There is hardly any more appropriate symbol to protest against the abuse of the memory of the Jewish victims of the Nazis as "justification" for the present Israeli war crimes.

There are those who argue that this comparison is very problematic and may be counterproductive. However, I cannot but conclude that, underlying this argument, is a racist presumption that Jewish blood and suffering are of a greater value than the blood and suffering of non-Jews.

Historically, despite all the differences between the two situations - Nazi Germany and present Israel - there are too many worrying and obvious structural similarities. My friend, Hajo Meyer, who survived Auschwitz, claims that, in certain respects, the situation of the Palestinians today is even worse than that which he experienced in Germany in the 1930s.

The fact that there are still some democratic traits in Israel today while in the 1930s Germany was a dictatorship makes no real difference to the victims, for whom the type of system which oppresses and abuses them is of no consequence. In fact, the Israeli Jewish citizens bear an even greater responsibility than did the people of Nazi Germany precisely because of these democratic traits. They don't yet have to fear the same repercussions as the Germans did under the Nazi regime.

On the Palestinian side there is an aversion to wearing the symbol of Judaism, the Star of David. Besides the importance of overcoming racism within their own community, it is vital to note that the yellow Star of David isn't a real religious symbol but the symbol of a specific group of victims.

Of course, yellow star activities require a certain kind of courage but, considering the desperate situation of the Palestinians, initiating and participating in such activities is but a small sacrifice to make.

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