OPINION: If the Holocaust has a moral lesson, it’s don’t demonise Jews
Suspended Labour MP Kate Osamor's attempt to link Israel and the Nazis reflected an alarming resurgence of religious animosity reminiscent of medieval times.
The day earmarked by the UN for Holocaust remembrance has become a desecration.
There seems to be a need to universalise Holocaust Memorial Day because we live in a world where six million Jews being murdered isn’t enough to commemorate on its own. But things have gone too far, and Jews are now being erased from remembrance of the Holocaust. For example, neither a BBC One bulletin or a two-minute speech by SNP leader Humza Yousaf about Holocaust Memorial Day mentioned Jews or antisemitism.
Perhaps they didn’t mention Jews because anti-Jewish attitudes are so common that they didn’t want to upset people who hate them. That would be a damning indictment of British society. But whatever the reason, the end result of erasing the memory of approximately one third of the world’s Jews is the opposite of commemoration. A second disappearance is exactly what the Third Reich had in mind.
The Labour Party has dealt with Kate Osamor swiftly. But just look at the journey the party had to take to reach this place.
The Nazis were totally obsessed with eradicating Jews: that is what the Holocaust was designed to do. To deny, gloss over or blame the Holocaust on Jewish people violates UN Resolution 60/7, stripping the Holocaust of meaning and rendering it an isolated event ring-fenced from reality. This is why people known for opposing Jews sign the book of remembrance for a virtue signalling photo opportunity.
Things have become so bad that some Jews now dread Holocaust Memorial Day because it has become a stick to beat us with and to abuse the sanctity of Holocaust remembrance. A recent example is MP Kate Osamor, who exploited the privilege of her office by comparing the current events in Gaza to the Holocaust.
As terrible as the current conflict in Gaza is, there are countless wars dwarfing the entire Israel-Arab conflict many times over, some even in the same region. In the Syrian war where civilians were routinely targeted, around 600,000 people were killed and leader Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people. None of these conflicts are compared with the Holocaust or labelled ‘genocide’ (a word coined by a Polish Jew in response to the Holocaust).
But when referring to Israel the comparison slips out easily because it gives people a frisson of excitement to break the Holocaust taboo. In her excitement, Osamor forgot to mention Darfur, which is officially recognised as part of Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration. Brutal ethnic cleansing is taking place there, with terrible atrocities along ethnic lines. About 9.5 million Sudanese people are currently displaced.
Because antisemitism is a conspiracy fantasy – a denial of reality – it means that real issues are not addressed. In this case the victims of other genocides were either ignored or incidental to the weaponisation of the ultimate Jewish trauma against Jews.
Comparing Jews with Nazis echoes medieval religious hatred, which linked Jews with the devil. And if Jews are like Nazis, then the next step is for people to say Jews should be destroyed like the Nazis were. Or that ‘Hitler was right’ and that the Holocaust was justified.
New iterations of antisemitism justify the previous versions, and make attacking Jews seem like a righteous mission, done for the sake of justice and humanity. This is how Holocaust Memorial Day is being used by some people – to recreate the conditions that led to the Holocaust.
It leads people down a road of pure hatred towards Jews. This is what happened in Oregon, when Elizabeth Ballesteros West made threats against the Jewish community and was arrested in possession of 27 guns. West’s justification was that ‘Jewish people treat Palestinians in the same manner as the Nazis treated the Jews’.
The Labour Party has dealt with Kate Osamor swiftly. But just look at the journey the party had to take to reach this place. Poisoned by an irrational obsession, the institution had to hit rock bottom to even start to address its antisemitism problem. And what about the rest of society – does that also have to become overwhelmed with anti-Jewish hate in order to address the issue? At what cost?
There are no morality tales from the Holocaust, and certainly not for the targets of it. If one is needed, then perhaps not demonising Jews might be a good place to start.
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