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Salute to a dignified and principled protester

Could there be a much more dignified and compelling protest?

"As protests continue against the Israeli assault in Gaza - including the arrest of Australian protesters who stormed a subsidiary of an Israeli arms manufacturer in Melbourne - another singular, dignified protest: Henk Zanoli, a 91-year-old Dutch man declared Righteous Among the Nations for saving a Jewish child during the Nazi occupation - during which his family worked with the Resistance and his parents perished in death camps - returned his medal after six of his relatives were killed by an Israeli bomb in Gaza. In a letter to Ambassador Haim Davon, Zanoli explained that he and his family had strongly supported the idea of a Jewish homeland, but "over more than six decades I have however slowly come to realize that the Zionist project had from its beginning a racist element in it."

“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...For me to hold on to the honour (would) be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family (who) lost no less than six of their relatives in Gaza at the hands of the State of Israel."


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