In some quarters, Holocaust Memorial Day is now approached with a sense of trepidation, having become an annual opportunity for Israel-haters and antisemites to hijack Shoah remembrance for their own political and racist ends.
One such instance came with a blast from the past last Friday night, when David Ward, the former Liberal Democrat MP and now a councillor for the party in Bradford, popped up on Twitter.
You will remember Mr Ward from his infamous effort four years ago when he marked HMD by blaming “the Jews” for “inflicting atrocities on Palestinians”.
This year, he trod a similar path, informing his followers that “#Auschwitz happened and never can be compared but would be betrayal of its victims to use it to protect #Israel Govt from condemnation”.
His mangled use of English aside — it has been noted that Mr Ward’s more outrageous postings almost always come late on weekend nights — it is entirely possible that any future such utterings will stray into illegality.
Pointing out the foulness of his message on Twitter myself, I was overwhelmed with a barrage of Mr Ward’s co-travellers trying to explain to me that “being anti the policy of the Israeli government is not being antisemitic”.
Correct; it’s not, but the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, now adopted by the British government, makes clear that “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is antisemitic.
Hopefully, the implementation of the IHRA definition will lead to a sufficient number of criminal prosecutions of these cretinous social media users to discourage other potential miscreants from pursuing their vile and offensive train of thought.
We might then finally be rid of the poisonous witterings of washed-up no-marks like Mr Ward.
Naz Shah, the Labour MP who was suspended by her party in 2016 for suggesting Israeli Jews should be “relocated” to the US and who likened Zionism to Al Qaeda, meanwhile continues her apparent rehabilitation.
Meeting the Board of Deputies in west Yorkshire on Monday, Ms Shah described her experience during the past year as “a learning curve”, a phrase some might find rather too casual given the seriousness of the offences and aftermath to which she refers.
Nonetheless, she did at least pledge to continue her efforts to tackle the hatred of Jews, prompting Board president Jonathan Arkush to call her “one of the only people involved in Labour’s antisemitism crisis who has sought to make amends for her actions”.
His remarks say far more about Ms Shah’s party than about her own conduct since her suspension last April.
Mr Arkush concluded by declaring her a “sincere friend of our community”, which is likely to be a step too far for many British Jews still bristling from years of antagonism at the hands of low-profile politicians and their supporters.
