• How the West hides its Gaza genocide guilt behind Holocaust Day remembrance
    Jonathan Cook | 31 January 2025 | Middle East Eye
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/west-hides-gaza-genocide-guilt-holocaust-day-how

    (...) British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made an address on Holocaust Remembrance Day that encapsulated how its message has been not only lost, but entirely twisted by western politicians.

    Pointing to his country’s plans for a National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, Starmer vowed to achieve more than just remembrance. “We must also act,” he said. And with a hypocrisy so glaring it nearly snuffed out the many dozens of candles arrayed behind him, he listed the recent genocides the West failed to stop.

    He solemnly intoned: “We say ‘never again’, but where was ‘never again’ in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, or in the acts of genocide against the Yazidi people? And where is ‘never again’ as antisemitism still kills Jewish people?”

    It was no surprise that, in rationalising its genocide in Gaza, Israel first spread wholly false stories that Hamas had baked babies alive in ovens, evoking the crematoria of Auschwitz. Or that Israeli soldiers, high on their conviction that they belong to an eternally victimised master race, repeatedly used vehicles to carve giant Stars of David onto Palestinian lands in Gaza.

    It is no surprise that Israeli popular culture has so dehumanised Palestinians that report after report finds those imprisoned by Israel face systematic torture, sexual abuse and rape. Or that Israeli soldiers regard Palestinians as so vermin-like that, as western doctors who have volunteered in Gaza keep warning, Israeli snipers and drones appear to be shooting Gaza’s children for sport.

    The truth is that the primary lesson of the Holocaust, like the reality of antisemitism, has been weaponised. It has been hollowed out of its true message - the message from the survivors - so that it can be cynically repurposed to justify the very crimes it should serve as a warning against.

    We cannot unsee what has taken place in Gaza over the past 15 months. Holocaust Remembrance Day didn’t succeed in shifting our attention back 80 years, as western leaders hoped it would. Rather, it brought the present into much sharper focus. (...)