Mailbox: Mamphele Ramphele's Holocaust obsession - Tim Flack

Key topics:

• Ramphele equates Gaza with the Holocaust, sparking outrage and criticism

• Holocaust inversion condemned as antisemitism, not legitimate analysis

• Calls for US to revoke Ramphele’s visa over antisemitic Holocaust distortion

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By Tim Flack

There are bad analogies. There are lazy analogies. And then there is Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, who went on South African television and declared without a hint of shame that Gaza is “a Holocaust.” Not “like a Holocaust.” Not “reminiscent of a Holocaust.” Simply: “It is a Holocaust.”

What followed was not insightful. It was not courage. It was not even original. It was the dreary, predictable recitation of the oldest propaganda trick in the activist arsenal. Holocaust inversion. The ugly tactic of taking Jewish memory and flipping it inside out. Jews, the historic victims of industrialised extermination, are recast as the new Nazis. Palestinians, no matter how deeply entwined their leadership is with groups like Hamas, are presented as the “new Jews.” It is an act of intellectual vandalism that turns six million murdered Jews into props for political theatre.

The anchor who interviewed Ramphele deserves real credit. A woman who refused to be steamrolled, she pressed her guest firmly. She told Ramphele that the Holocaust and Gaza are different. That equating them undermines the singularity of the Shoah. Ramphele’s reply was as arrogant as it was ignorant: “Why can’t I compare them? It is a Holocaust by any definition.”

No, Doctor. It is not. And the fact that someone with your background and prestige cannot tell the difference between Auschwitz and urban warfare is not a mark of bravery. It is a confession of moral illiteracy.

Holocaust inversion is not analysis, it is antisemitism

It must be said clearly. Holocaust inversion is not a debate. It is not a serious analysis. It is not a moral argument. It is antisemitism in its purest form. It is condemned by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance precisely because it turns Jewish trauma into a weapon against Jews. It does not illuminate the present. It desecrates the past.

The Holocaust was unique. It was not just another genocide, and it was not a tragedy of war. It was an extermination program that sought to remove every Jew from existence. It was carried out with cold precision, bureaucratic obsession, and industrial scale. Jews were not casualties of conflict. They were the target of annihilation.

Gaza, for all its suffering, is not that. The conflict is brutal, tragic, and deeply complex. Civilians suffer. Lives are lost. But the stated aim is not to erase Palestinians from the face of the earth. To call this a Holocaust is to strip Auschwitz of its meaning and to turn the word itself into a toy for demagogues.

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Ramphele knows this. Or rather, she should know it. Which makes her insistence all the more disgraceful.

Six million as a yardstick

Perhaps the lowest point of the interview came when the anchor pushed further and asked her to explain the comparison. Ramphele snapped back with this chilling line: “Do we have to wait for six million people to be killed before we can call it what it is?”

Here lies the full bankruptcy of her thinking. Six million Jews slaughtered across Europe. Entire families extinguished. Communities erased from history. This is not for Ramphele a singular crime against humanity. It is a yardstick. It is a numerical benchmark she waves around to dramatize her rhetoric.

This is not moral clarity. It is moral vandalism. It is the deliberate flattening of history into propaganda. It is to take the Holocaust and strip it of meaning until it becomes just another slogan in a tired activist speech.

The United States should not host this

Let us remember where Ramphele is speaking from. She is not in Cape Town or Johannesburg. She is in San Francisco. She announced proudly that she is on sabbatical in the United States. Which means she is making these pronouncements while enjoying the hospitality of a country that has made solemn commitments to fight Holocaust denial, distortion, and inversion.

Here is where the test lies. The United States has declared in its National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism that Holocaust inversion is antisemitism. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance says the same. By these standards, Ramphele qualifies. She has crossed the line. She has embraced antisemitism.

The question now is whether Washington will act on its own words. If the standard is real, then the response is obvious. Her visa should be revoked. Her platform should be denied. She should be sent home. America does not need to bankroll the sabbatical of a woman who goes on television to declare Jews the new Nazis.

South Africa’s shame, America’s responsibility

South Africa’s public square has grown comfortable with this language. Protesters outside Holocaust memorials chant “Zionist Nazis” as if it were clever. Politicians toss around Nazi analogies in Parliament like confetti. Civil society organisations use Holocaust inversion as casually as they order coffee. That is South Africa’s shame.

But it must not become America’s problem. The United States has no obligation to import Holocaust inversion into its own public discourse. It does not need to host it, sponsor it, or legitimise it. To do so would be to betray its own commitments, to dishonour Holocaust survivors, and to degrade the very memory it has pledged to protect.

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Mamphela Ramphele has disgraced herself. Like too many others in South Africa, and even recently a journalist now based in the United States, she has embraced Holocaust inversion, the cheapest and ugliest trick in the activist arsenal. In doing so, she has reduced six million murdered Jews to a prop for her politics. She has spat on history and then tried to pass it off as morality.

That is not courage. It is cowardice. That is not wisdom. It is ignorance. That is not justice. It is antisemitism.

The Holocaust is not a metaphor. It is not a political slogan. It is not a tool to be borrowed by whoever wants to score rhetorical points against Jews. It is a singular crime. To strip it of that singularity is to rob the dead and to insult the living.

Ramphele has made her choice. She has shown the world who she is. It is now America’s turn to make a choice. To tolerate her presence is to tolerate antisemitism. To revoke her visa is to draw a line.

The United States should draw that line. Send her home. And make it clear to the world that Holocaust inversion, this grotesque inversion of memory, has no place on American soil. I am sick to death of this kind of rhetoric, and dear reader you should be too. Enough is enough. The Holocaust is not a metaphor, not a slogan, and not a weapon for activists to hurl at Jews. It is the darkest crime in human history, and anyone who twists it into propaganda should be shown the door.