UN backs Israeli call to condemn Holocaust denial despite Iran’s opposition

The United Nations General Assembly has approved an Israeli-backed resolution that condemns denial of Holocaust and urges all countries and social media platforms to combat antisemitism.

The measures were passed by consensus – without the need for a formal vote – even though Iran urged member states to reject it.

The Iranian representative to the UN said Israel “routinely attempts to exploit the suffering of Jewish people in the past as cover for the crimes it has perpetrated over the past seven decades against the regional countries.”

The vote took place on 20 January, the 80th anniversary of a conference on the shores of Berlin’s Wannsee Lake where Nazi leaders coordinated their plans to exterminate Jewish people.

Earlier Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, said he hoped the resolution would be adopted by consensus because, with many Holocaust survivors passing now, the internet was spreading “this dangerous phenomena of distorting and even denying the Holocaust”.

He told the Associated Press on Wednesday: “If we want this body, the UN, to succeed in preventing genocide we must remember what happened in the past and this is the goal of tomorrow’s decision.”

The resolution commends countries that have preserved Nazi death camps and other Holocaust sites and urges all 193 member states to educate future generations about the Holocaust to prevent future genocides.

Many countries have followed the UN’s lead in designated 27 January, the anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation in 1945, as Holocaust Remembrance Day.