The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) on Monday denounced an upcoming event taking place on Wednesday, November 9, in Tel Aviv, Israel entitled: Understanding the Other Side’s Pain: The Shoah, the Nakba, and the German Remembrance Culture.

Sponsored by the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, the event will take place at the Goethe Institute on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associated dean and director of global social action at SWC, issued a statement condemning planned event.

“It is despicable that any German would utter Shoah and Nakba in the same breath. There is nothing wrong with exploring the feelings of Palestinians, but to link the Palestinian-Israel conflict in any way to Nazi Germany’s ‘Final Solution’ that murdered 6 million innocent Jews, among them 1.5 million Jewish children, is a monstrous insult to the victims of the Shoah, to the Jewish State of Israel, to survivors of the Shoah and to historic truth."

"Convening such a discussion in Israel -- on the anniversary of Kristallnacht -- by the foundation of a left wing German political party, at the respected Goethe Institute, is an odious provocation. The SWC calls on the Goethe Institute to cancel its hosting of the event and urges Israel Prime Minster Lapid to demand that this event be canceled."

"Both Germany and Israel have worked for decades to forge a new relationship out of the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust and have developed strong ties. But no German, whatever their political affiliation has the right to be involved in belittling the Shoah or to further facilitate the big lie that Israel treats Palestinians the same way the Nazis treated Jews”