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'Never Again' Unless Maybe You Thought That Included Palestinians, Holocaust Museum Says By Deleting Post
"Palestinians are so dehumanized that they're excluded from 'never again,'" said one researcher.
Sep 08, 2025
"Unbelievable" yet entirely predictable was how Palestinian rights supporters described a decision by Holocaust Museum LA in Los Angeles over the weekend to take down a social media post that had stated a clear opposition to all genocide, no matter the victims.
The museum had shared a post with its 24,200 Instagram followers last week that read, "Never again can't only mean never again for Jews," repeating a sentiment expressed by Jewish-led human rights groups and the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, named for the Holocaust survivor who coined the term "genocide."
"Jews were raised to say, 'Never again,'" the post continued. "That means never again. For anyone."
But the post was met with a barrage of angry comments from pro-Israel users and groups including the organization Stop Antisemitism, which calls itself a Jewish civil rights watchdog group and has spent months targeting public figures who criticize Israel's assault on Gaza and express support for Palestinians, more than 63,000 of whom have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023.
The group—which earlier this year called on the US Department of Justice to investigate whether children's entertainer Ms. Rachel is funded by Hamas due to her support for Palestinian rights—called on donors to the museum to "redirect [their] giving our way, an organization that focuses solely on the Jewish people and fighting the bigotry we face."
An account with 30,000 followers was among those that accused the museum of "feeding into the genocide libel"—suggesting that the finding by numerous international rights organizations, the Lemkin Institute, and Israeli human rights groups that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is comparable to medieval "blood libels" against Jewish people.
The museum responded to the comments by taking down the post and issuing an apology that appeared intent on denying the organization has any concern for Palestinians currently facing a famine orchestrated by the Israeli government and daily attacks as Israel enacts its plan to take over the entire Gaza Strip.
The original post, said the museum, had been intended to "promote inclusivity and community," but was "easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East."
"The was not our intent," the organization added, promising to more thoroughly vet its social media content in the future to ensure its message "always remains clear."
The museum's overall message to the public, suggested the apology, is not that all populations must be protected from genocidal violence—a statement that left Ryan Grim of Drop Site News "speechless."
Grim said the museum's position appeared to be, "If you denounce genocide, some might think you're being critical of Israel and we can't have that."
The apology itself, said Laila Al-Arian of Al Jazeera's "Fault Lines," would not be out of place "in a museum someday showing how genocides happen."
Writer and researcher Ismail Aderonmu added that the museum, which was founded by Holocaust survivors, had stepped back from "the clearest moral lesson of the Holocaust: Never again for anyone."
Human rights lawyer Yasmine Taeb told Al Jazeera that Holocaust Museum LA's original post had simply appeared to acknowledge what "countless genocide scholars and human rights organizations" have already said: that "what Israel is doing in Gaza is textbook definition of genocide."
"It's appalling that a museum established for the purpose of educating the public about genocide and the Holocaust not only refuses to acknowledge the reality of Israel's actions in Gaza, but [is] removing a social media post that merely stated that 'never again' is not intended for just Jews, in order for it to not be interpreted as a response to the genocide in Gaza," Taeb said.
Assal Rad, a researcher at Arab Institute Washington, DC added that the apology was dehumanizing to Palestinians in Gaza and the US.
"Palestinians are so dehumanized that they're excluded from 'never again,'" said Rad. "Apparently their genocide is the exception."
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Will Dem Leadership Follow the Base on Gaza or Get Left Behind?
By appearing to put the profits of arms manufacturers above the lives of Palestinian children, a refusal to condition offensive military aid could subject Israel hawks to primary challengers or result in lower turnout for incumbents in the general election.
Sep 07, 2025
Nearly two years in to the US-backed genocide in Gaza, there are clear signals that the Democratic Party’s base is moving far away from supporting the Israeli government and its war machine.
And while party leadership is beginning to show some hopeful signs that it might be starting to listen to constituents’ changing attitudes on the issue of Israel and Palestine, such a shift wasn’t immediately obvious from the summer meeting of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in Minneapolis last month.
Recent polls have shown 78% of Democrats support recognizing the State of Palestine, which three-quarters of United Nations member states—including some of the United States’ closest allies—already do. Similarly, 75% of Democratic voters oppose sending additional military aid to Israel, which is already illegal, according to Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars the United States from providing military assistance to countries blocking humanitarian aid.
Still, at its August meeting, the DNC Resolutions Committee voted down a resolution calling for recognizing Palestine and suspending military aid with a decisive margin.
Following the defeat of the resolution, which had been endorsed by College Democrats and other progressive constituencies, and rejecting the sponsors’ offers to compromise on the language, DNC Chair Ken Martin and 17 other top party leaders successfully pushed through a different resolution which, while advocating a two-state solution, insisted the creation of a Palestinian state only come “through direct bilateral negotiations.” Critics, however, note that no such direct Israeli-Palestinian talks have taken place for more than a decade while the current Israeli government categorically rules out Palestinian statehood. Combined with the DNC’s objection to conditioning aid to Israel, this appears to have been a de facto endorsement of ongoing Israeli control over and colonization of the occupied territories.
While the party leadership’s resolution specifically condemned Hamas for its October 7, 2023 terrorist attack, calling the killing of 1,200 Israelis a “massacre,” it did not condemn Israel’s killing of over 50 times as many Palestinians, referring to their deaths in the passive voice and not even saying who did the killing—the resolution only noted the “loss” of tens of thousands of lives in “the war between Israel and Hamas.” The resolution also implied that Hamas was equally responsible for the growing famine in Gaza as was the Israeli government, which is imposing the siege on the enclave. The resolution’s call for a ceasefire was linked to the unconditional release of the remaining Israeli hostages while failing to call on Israel to release the estimated nearly 5,000 Palestinians held without charge in Israeli prisons.
However, that resolution never even made it to the full DNC. Aware of the backlash following the two votes, Martin immediately withdrew his resolution from consideration. Recognizing the vote’s potential impact, the DNC chair for the first time acknowledged that “there’s a divide in our party on this issue,” saying, “This is a moment that calls for shared dialogue, calls for shared advocacy.” He then announced a taskforce “comprised of stakeholders on all sides of this” to help formulate the party’s position on Israel and Palestine.
The willingness to finally challenge the party’s traditional blank check to the Israeli government may be tactical: Increasing numbers of Democrats, particularly younger voters, are not just questioning Israeli policies, but Zionism itself.
There is likely no other issue where the party leadership is as out of sync with its base. Allison Minnerly, a young DNC member who sponsored the defeated resolution, noted how only 8% of registered Democrats support the party’s current position in support of Israel’s war on Gaza. And the defeat was not for lack of mobilization: Members of the committee received hundreds of thousands of emails encouraging support for Minnerly’s resolution.
Harold Meyerson, editor at-large for The American Prospect, noted, “We’ve been here before: widespread Democratic opposition to an outrageous war, particularly among the young, while a good chunk of the party’s establishment remains unwilling to halt US involvement in that conflict. In the ’60s, that was Vietnam. Today, it’s Gaza.”
According to James Zogby, a longtime DNC member and advocate of Palestinian rights, the Minneapolis meeting should be seen in a somewhat positive light as a result of the unprecedented level of debate—and the fact that Martin felt obliged to withdraw his resolution. In a statement following the meeting, Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, wrote that the outcome should be seen as “a recognition of the shifting tides within the party and the reality that the status quo has become unacceptable and untenable. Supporters of Palestinian rights should understand that this was a victory and an important step forward in the long struggle for justice.”
In addition, there are signs of a real shift among Democratic officials, even in Washington. While Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries, and most others in the congressional leadership still strongly advocate arming and supporting the Israeli government, for the first time a majority of Democratic senators voted in favor of an unsuccessful resolution earlier this summer to block US President Donald Trump’s proposal to send additional bombs and missiles to further destroy Gaza. As a result of the dramatic shift among Democratic voters in recent months regarding US policy toward Israel and Palestine, it appears that at least some Democratic politicians are now becoming more scared of their constituents than they are of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Notably, increasing numbers of Jewish Democrats in Congress are calling for suspending offensive military aid to Israel, as are some Democrats who previously received AIPAC funding and supported the group’s unwavering support for the Netanyahu government.
Just as Democratic officials became more willing to oppose the Vietnam War once it was being waged by Republican Richard Nixon instead of Democrat Lyndon Johnson, Democratic members of Congress today are appearing more willing to challenge Trump’s support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than they were former President Joe Biden’s.
With over two-thirds of registered Democrats saying Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide or are “akin to genocide” (nine times those saying otherwise), the party’s 2024 platform, which insisted that billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional military aid to Israel remain “ironclad,” is becoming increasingly controversial. And the Democratic Party’s longstanding position of prioritizing the national rights and security interests of Israelis over Palestinians is harder to defend when polling shows only 12% of registered Democrats say their sympathies are more with Israel.
By appearing to put the profits of arms manufacturers above the lives of Palestinian children, this refusal to condition offensive military aid could subject Israel hawks to primary challengers or result in lower turnout for incumbents in the general election.
Liberal Zionist groups like J Street are now for the first time supporting some restrictions on military aid and are trying to push the Democratic Party to take a more critical position against Netanyahu, the war on Gaza, and the occupation of Palestine. A number of state Democratic parties, even in swing states like North Carolina, have gone on record calling for a suspension of military aid to Israel.
Historically, the Democratic Party leadership has initially been out of line with its constituents on key foreign policy issues, including in Vietnam, Central America, Southern Africa, East Timor, Iraq and, Afghanistan, as well as on the nuclear arms race.
The willingness to finally challenge the party’s traditional blank check to the Israeli government may be tactical: Increasing numbers of Democrats, particularly younger voters, are not just questioning Israeli policies, but Zionism itself. There is also a growing sense among progressive Democrats that, with increasing colonization of the West Bank by Israeli settlers, it may be a too late for a viable two-state solution and the focus should be on ending Israeli apartheid and creating a single binational state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
As a result, there is growing recognition that if party leaders do not explicitly break with Netanyahu, Democratic voters may demand that Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterm elections and beyond take outright anti-Israel positions.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has said that arms transfers to Israel is “going to be a defining issue in the Democratic Party in the midterms and for 2028.” Already, potential 2028 contenders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Khanna, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker have gone on record supporting conditioning further arms transfers.
Meanwhile, in New York City, long a bastion of the pro-Israel wing of the Democratic Party, Democrats have nominated Zohran Mamdani, a vocal critic of Israel, to be their nominee for mayor.
It is not just the undeniable horror of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and increasing settler violence in the West Bank that are responsible for this shift. Credit should also be given to the widespread popular mobilization against US support for Netanyahu, not only from traditional pro-Palestine groups, but mainstream liberal and progressive organizations which had traditionally avoided the subject. Over 20 prominent groups aligned with the Democratic Party have formed the Reject AIPAC Coalition to push Democratic candidates to refuse money from AIPAC, an influential right-wing Zionist organization.
For example, Peace Action, the largest multi-issue peace group, has long taken solid positions regarding Israel and Palestine, but only rarely made it a priority, and their PAC was willing to endorse supporters of Israel’s wars and occupation if they were progressive on other foreign policy issues. Now, however, they have been among the leading groups mobilizing against US support for Netanyahu, having made it their number one issue over the past two years, and are pushing hard to restrict US arms transfers. They are currently spearheading support for the Block the Bombs Act in Congress.
Jon Rainwater, Peace Action’s executive director noted: “How can Sen. Chuck Schumer lead the Democratic Party against Trumpism if he sides with Bibi Netanyahu’s worst authoritarian instincts…? How can someone like Sen. Cory Booker give anti-authoritarian speeches about fighting ‘for the moral soul of the nation’ while he votes to keep the US complicit in starving a people and other war crimes?”
There can be major political costs if Democratic candidates refuse to side with the majority of their constituents. Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election due to a major drop-off in Democratic voters from four years earlier. One poll indicated that the single biggest reason cited by voters who had cast their ballots for Biden in 2020 but didn’t back Harris in 2024 was the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, which Harris was seen to support.
Historically, the Democratic Party leadership has initially been out of line with its constituents on key foreign policy issues, including in Vietnam, Central America, Southern Africa, East Timor, Iraq and, Afghanistan, as well as on the nuclear arms race. Eventually, however, the party’s base has been able to force changes in position. It is looking increasingly likely that such a change may be in store regarding Israel and Palestine.
The question is how long it will take—and how many more Palestinians will have to die before it becomes a reality.
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Speaking Out Against Genocide: Reckoning and Accountability
The truth is that most of us—not all of us, but most of us who grew up in Jewish communities—supported Israel and Zionism, until, often after a very long time, we didn’t.
Aug 31, 2025
I’ve been seeing a number of different discussions lately (posts and articles) about how Jews who have been speaking out against Israel’s genocide since October 2023 are feeling about Jews who are only more recently speaking out. How one feels, how one thinks these “newcomers” should be regarded, and one’s (potential) relationship with them, how one embraces them (or not), are part of the discussion. And questions about the need for accountability, repentance, and reckoning have been central to the conversations.
I believe strongly in processes of accountability and in reckoning, but what concerns me in what I’m reading is that it sounds to me like the discussion is about “us” and “them,” (the “good” and “not so good” Jews)—that is, those who have supported (or been silent until recently about) the genocide and those of us who haven’t. I do not mean to suggest that this kind of “us” and “them” characterization is the intention, but it is how some of it has come across to me. (And what struck me is that some of the posts/articles to which I refer come from those who have just themselves begun speaking out more openly and critically in recent years.)
I, of course, see groups and individuals speaking out now who still have deeply problematic analyses and who don’t begin to address the root of the problem—the original and ongoing Nakba—or decades of complicity. And I, too, have feelings about those who have taken so long to finally act with a semblance of humanity and who have not been vociferous in their opposition to widespread Jewish community support for, and complicity in, genocide. But the truth is that most of us—not all of us, but most of us who grew up in Jewish communities—supported Israel and Zionism, until, often after a very long time, we didn’t. And even after not supporting Israel or declaring ourselves anti-Zionists, there was so much to learn, to de-exceptionalize, to challenge ourselves on. And, certainly for me, that process continues to this day.
My own journey away from Zionism did not happen fully until the late 1980s, after I participated in an international peace conference (Road to Peace) with Palestinians from the US and from Palestine. While I had always been against the occupation of 1967, it was at the conference (and during the yearlong pre-conference planning) that I learned about the Nakba, about the right of return, about the Zionist movement’s role in the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land and homes. The information was out there way before the conference and way before I identified as an anti-Zionist. But I had blinders on, and I didn’t challenge myself, or listen, nearly enough.
I’m interested in how we can build upon the ways people have (finally) spoken out... toward genuine recognition that this genocide is not an aberration in the history of Zionist and Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.
So I feel like some of the calls for accountability I’m reading let “us” off the hook, like we don’t have to engage in our own ongoing reckoning and accountability. I don’t mean only for things past, but for the ways we—even unwittingly—continue to perpetuate and support injustice or Jewish exceptionalism or even stay silent (or weaken our messaging) at critical times when our voices could make a difference. Again, I believe we need to continually engage in this process to challenge both the (very present) Zionist framework that values Jewish lives over others, as well as the Jewish exceptionalist framework—with which many of us were brought up—of Jews as the chosen people. (And even those of us who flatly reject the latter concept might still find ourselves perpetuating the notion that there is a Jewish ethical tradition that is—just a bit!—more special or different than that of others.)
Sometimes as I read Steven Salaita–whose ethics and integrity and brilliance impact me deeply—and pay close attention to his words, I’ll start to feel something (discomfort?) and then I think, oh no, I see myself in that. And I know I need to consider long and hard about how to challenge what I see myself perpetuating. He doesn’t point fingers. He just says it as it is.
Reflecting upon the current moment, what I think about when I see all these new people, particularly many Jews, starting to move in the right direction is how they might move beyond where they are at right now to where they and we could and should be—acknowledging and opposing the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 and all that follows from that. Because we know that the complicity of US Jewish institutions in supporting the Zionist movement and then Israel in the ongoing expulsion of the Palestinian people from Palestine, and in justifying and/or remaining silent about the Nakba, goes back for decades—including among many of us who now define ourselves as anti-Zionists.
So I see one part of the work I am committed to as trying to open up spaces for those who are now speaking out in opposition to this genocide, to this starvation campaign, for real learning, and for community accountability about the Nakba of 1948 and the ongoing Nakba. I’m interested in how we can build upon the ways people have (finally) spoken out—just as so many of us were motivated at some point to speak out and renounce our support for Zionism—toward genuine recognition that this genocide is not an aberration in the history of Zionist and Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.
The goal for me in this particular work is to have more and more of us within our Jewish communities joining, with integrity, in the Palestinian-led movement for justice. There is so much out there to deepen our analysis and organizing—resources and educational materials of Palestinian organizations, scholars, historians, and activists. My own journey has included so much learning over many years and then participating in the creation of educational curricula, first (inspired by Zochrot) Facing the Nakba, and, in more recent years, together with Project48, the Palestinian Nakba curriculum. So many resources abound, and I consider part of my responsibility now, which I embrace, to engage deeply with these resources within Jewish communities where there are openings to strengthen our collective accountability, and our commitment, in word and action, to seeking and pursuing justice.
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