17 December 2024
To whom it may concern
Dear Sir/Madam
The front page of the official Holocaust Memorial Day website describes its mission as follows: “to remember the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of people murdered under Nazi persecution of other groups, and in more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.”
The mission statement makes clear that genocide is not restricted to a particular period of history, geographical area or group of people.
It is vital that these considerations remain at the forefront of any remembrance of the Holocaust. There is no hierarchy of genocides or suffering and the fact of remembrance is not limited by the background of either the victims or the perpetrators of any of the genocides. Every genocide is unique and all are morally abhorrent.
It is therefore with grave concern and great disappointment that we note the absence of the ongoing genocide in Gaza from the list of genocides mentioned by HMD. The failure to include it in commemorations would undermine a fundamental aim of marking the Holocaust which is to help prevent further genocides and to put a stop to genocides when they occur, rather than being a symbolic exercise in remembering historical atrocities.
Ther can be little doubt that Israel’s savage onslaught against the besieged people of Gaza amounts to a genocide. Indeed, the following organisations and individuals have all either defined the atrocities as tantamount to genocide or as is the case with the ICJ, believe there is enough evidence to try the state of Israel for the crime of genocide:
On 29 December 2023, the US-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued a statement, “Why We Call the Israeli Attack on Gaza Genocide”. The statement says: “The Lemkin Institute believes that Israel’s retaliation against Palestinians amounts not only to war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also to genocide.”
On 26 January, 2024, in its ruling on the case brought by South Africa against Israel the International Court of Justice in the Hague said that “at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the (Genocide) Convention.”
On 5 March 2024, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation adopted a resolution which “emphasizes its strong condemnation of the unprecedented comprehensive barbaric aggression against civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip and the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory, including killing, bombing, and deliberate destruction, and the commission of atrocities against them, including the crime of genocide…” and “Holds Israel, the occupying power, fully responsible for the fate of civilians in the Gaza Strip and the ongoing genocide they are subjected to”.
A UN report, ‘Anatomy of a Genocide’ published on 26 March 2024 by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestine Territories stated: “Following nearly six months of unrelenting Israeli assault on occupied Gaza, it is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of, and to present my findings. There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met.”
In May 2024, a report by the University Network for Human Rights concluded that “actions taken by Israel’s government and military in and regarding Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, constitute breaches of the international law prohibitions on the commission of genocide.” The report is one of the most thorough legal analyses to date of the “crime of crimes” expressed in the 1948 Genocide Convention and the related international jurisprudence, as applied to the facts on the ground in Gaza since October 7. It concludes that Israel’s actions meet the legal threshold of genocide, producing legal obligations for Israel and the international community to end the slaughter.
In June 2024, the co-founder of Human Rights Watch, Aryeh Neier, accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Mr Neier, who is Jewish and a Holocaust survivor, said Israel had done so by obstructing the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
And as recently as this month, Amnesty International concluded in a detailed report of Israeli activities in Gaza that there is sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has and continues to commit genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip. “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide,” said the human rights watchdog.
In addition to these determinations, our screens and social media platforms have been bombarded daily since October 2023 with horrific images of innocent Palestinians being slaughtered in cold blood by the Israeli occupation forces, leaving us with little doubt that a genocide is being perpetrated live before our eyes. So far at least 45,000 people have been killed, most of them women and children, while being starved and deprived of the basic conditions necessary for human existence.
In view of the overwhelming evidence pointing to the crime of genocide being perpetrated in Gaza it is imperative that if HMD is to retain any credibility as a commemoration, it must be universal in scope and inclusive and recognise the genocide currently unfolding in Gaza. It is also imperative that if we are to remain faithful to the aim of stopping current and preventing future genocides that we include the genocide that is unfolding in our time.
Our request to the HMD Trust to include Gaza has been met with silence. We feel this is morally unacceptable.
It undermines a key aim of such commemorations which is to go beyond mere remembrance and take practical measures to ensure that “Never Again” means precisely that. The failure of the HMD Trust to respect such an axiomatic principle speaks to the racial exclusivism that has come to characterise the official commemoration.
For these reasons, we would request that you boycott the official HMD Trust commemoration and replace it with alternatives that recognise the horrific genocide taking place in front of our very eyes.
Yours faithfully
Massoud Shadjareh
Chair, IHRC
