The PACBI claimed photo of dead Holocaust victims was the “Tantura Massacre.” By Terri Nir, United with Israel MK Amichai Chikli (Likud) shared on Twitter a photo of dead corpses at a Nazi concentration camp posted by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which claimed to depict an Israeli massacre of Palestinians. “The racist BDS Movement breaks a Guiness record, uses a picture from the German concentration camp of Nordhausen to lie about a fictional massacre during Israel’s War of Independence. Holocaust distortion, appropriation and denial, further victimizing Jewish people. Pure evil,” Chikli tweeted. “Rows of bodies of dead inmates fill the yard of Lager Nordhausen, a Gestapo concentration camp. This photo shows less than half of the bodies of the several hundred inmates who died of starvation or were shot by Gestapo men,” Chikli added.
The racist @BDSmovement breaks a Guiness record, uses a picture from the German concentration camp of Nordhausen to lie about a fictional massacre during Israel’s War of Independence.
Holocaust distortion, appropriation and denial,further victimizing Jewish people. Pure evil. pic.twitter.com/rg8RLpO6Um — עמיחי שיקלי – Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) February 16, 2023
The PACBI apologized for the alleged mistake, having originally claimed the photo was of the “Tantura Massacre,” allegedly committed in 1948, when the fledgling State of Israel was attacked by the surrounding Arab countries bent on its destruction. But it continued to blame Israel.
In calls for European Molecular Biology Org to move workshop from a site of a massacre and mass grave of Palestinians, an incorrect image was inadvertently used.
We do not take this lightly and immediately removed the image. We apologize for any offense that this has caused. pic.twitter.com/5POq0QfF2u — PACBI (@PACBI) February 17, 2023
“In calls for European Molecular Biology Org to move workshop from a site of a massacre and mass grave of Palestinians, an incorrect image was inadvertently used. We do not take this lightly and immediately removed the image. We apologize for any offense that this has caused,” PACBI tweeted on Friday, although the group continued its condemnation of Israel. Chikli told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that the photo was correctly identified by historian Gideon Greif, who specializes in the history of the Holocaust, as fake Palestinian propaganda. The “Tantura Massacre” took place on the night of May 22–23, 1948, during fighting between the Arabs and the IDF. An estimated 40-200 Arabs were killed. The Post notes that the original photos says it displayed the “aftermath of the British bombing raid of 3 and 4 April 1945 that destroyed the Boelcke-Kaserne (Boelcke Barracks) located in the south-east of the town of Nordhausen and killed around 1,300 inmates.”