Why the UN’s Resolution on Holocaust Denial is So Important
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The United Nations General Assembly recently passed “by consensus” – meaning no vote was taken – a resolution calling on the world’s states to work to combat Holocaust denial. A report can be found here.
It’s not only states that should heed the resolution, and come down hard on those who promote Holocaust denial. Social media companies, especially Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, have not done nearly enough to reduce antisemitic content. Late in December, European parliamentarians knocked Facebook for its bland “reactivity” to antisemitic content like Holocaust denial, saying that only 11 percent of the posts they reported to Facebook were eventually taken down.
That it has come to this – that the world has needed a U.N. Resolution condemning Holocaust denial and committing states to combat its expression – is deeply depressing. But this denial, which both results from, and further encourages, antisemitism, is found unacceptably often on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the other insensate carriers of antisemitic messages that fail to remove such material in a timely – i.e., nearly instantaneous – fashion. Antisemitic attacks have been inexorably increasing all over the world. Just spend a few hair-raising minutes looking at Antisemitism Monitor here.
At that website, I found recorded every kind of antisemitic incident, and statistics on attitudes toward Jews. In less than ten minutes, and limiting myself to five countries,, I found the following:
Antisemitic chants filling sports stadiums, with soccer fans filmed in two dozen countries giving Nazi salutes and singing “Jews to the gas.” Graffiti on buildings that read “Make a homeland, kill a Jew” and “We are going to kill you, Jewish rats.” In Argentina, 40% of the people believe that “Jewish businessmen” are benefiting from COVID-19. 60% of Jews who live in Queensland, Australia, say they have experienced antisemitism. Austrians fly Nazi flags near synagogues. An Austrian rapper broadcasts a hit song praising an attack on a synagogue. Antisemitic incidents in Austria double from 2020 to 2021. A man on an Austrian train is punched for asking passengers to stop denying the Holocaust. The Belarus president, Alexander Lukashenko, is quoted as saying “[t]he Jews succeeded in causing the entire world to kneel to them and no one will dare raise a voice and deny the Holocaust.”
In Brazil, a journalist writes that Brazil would need to kill its Jews to match Germany’s wealth. A minister and his followers pray for another Holocaust to afflict the Jews. The University of Toronto is silent in response to a damning report about antisemitism on all three of its campuses. Jews are beaten up walking to and from synagogues in Canada. A kosher bakery target of vandalism and arson. Toronto school board reinstates employee who circulated material praising terrorist groups and justifying suicide bombings against Israel. B’nai Brith Canada calls for action to ensure that the University of Victoria course on antisemitism taught by someone who has called Abe Foxman a Zionist pig and claimed that North American Jews support genocide, does not become a forum for antisemitism. Students filmed giving Nazi salute and shouting Heil Hitler. In Chile, the President of the Palestinian community says Jews control the media and world finances. A Chilean newspaper prints a tribute to Nazi leader Hermann Goring. Gabriel Boric, a left-wing candidate, who has a long record of castigating Israel and is a close ally of a prominent communist who is a known antisemite, wins presidential election, promptly denounces Jews. Hate mail to a French-Jewish lawmaker tells her to prepare for the camps while a swastika is carved into the door of aSwiss synagogue. A teenager is arrested after waving machete and yelling “dirty Jews” in front of a French Jewish school. Researchers at the University of Bielefeld find that gangsta rap lyrics are a breeding ground for antisemitism among young German fans. A group of 10 Muslims attacks a man wearing a kippah in Cologne in what police classify as an antisemitic hate crime. A Jewish man is attacked by three Arabs who tried to force him to say “Free Palestine.” German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle suspends four employees and one freelancer during investigation into allegations of anti-Israel and antisemitic views.
Had enough? Me too. There’s no need to go on, to offer ten thousand more examples of antisemitism around the globe. I have kept out all the examples of antisemitic torturing and murdering. I simply offer the tiniest scrap of evidence of the worldwide epidemic of antisemitism. I leave it to you to identify the most dangerous of the current carriers of the virus.
That’s why the Resolution on Holocaust Denial is important. Now that it has been adopted, let’s see which states take it seriously, and which do not. And may the decent countries treat the latter accordingly.
