King Charles is to visit Auschwitz for commemoration events later this month, marking the 80th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation. He will meet local representatives in Krakow and back in Blighty, he will host an event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 at Buckingham Palace, with no fewer than three Holocaust educational organisations, as well as Manfred Goldberg, a 94-year-old survivor of camps and a death march.
This seemly and dignified engagement with Holocaust remembrance, and the organisations committed to ensuring it is never forgotten, reflects well on the King, the Royal Family – who appear to share the monarch’s instinctive respect for Holocaust education – and much of Britain’s official class. The latter, after all, has for years been trying to get a big Holocaust memorial built right by the Palace of Westminster (to the dismay of some Jews).
Leaving aside the disturbing incursion of horrible woke ideas into the whole edifice of Holocaust education, such as the insistence on making it seem as if the (white) Jews were just one of many casualties, and that it is therefore racist to focus on them, there is, generally, a sense that the great and the good of Britain supports Holocaust remembrance.
The disconnect, therefore, with the public stance on Israel held by so many statesmen and grandees (although not, as far as one can tell, the King) could not be more jarring. It is totally unacceptable in the higher circles of Westminster and Whitehall not to wholeheartedly show your respects for the importance of Holocaust memorialisation and education. But it is entirely respectable, and even expected, to be openly scathing about Israel’s military campaigns, even though these are entirely waged in self-defence.
This is because the blood libel that sees Israel as primarily motivated by zest for punishment and the spilling of children’s blood has powered a disinformation campaign so global and normalised that those who repeat it are actually praised for their humanity.
But you can’t really believe the first notion, about the importance and implications of the Holocaust, and not the second, about Israel’s essential legitimacy, right to and need for a strong army, and the way its unique history shapes its needs and status.
Sure, there were moves Zion-wards by Jews since the 19th century, but the ratification of the state of Israel is a direct result of the Holocaust, and a manifestation of the shell-shocked post-Holocaust world order. Every war Israel has waged since its founding – beginning with the Arab-Israeli war fought by Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq the day after Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948 – has been about ensuring its survival. The IDF is one of few armies whose very name describes its purpose: “Defence”. There can be no cause more proper.
Yet here we are, over a year into the grisliest war Israel has had to fight, the result of an invasion that has come closest to manifesting the naked second Holocaust ambitions of its Islamist gangster neighbours, and it is mandatory to counter any support for Israel’s “right to defend itself” with condemnation of its way of doing so.
That’s if you’re not giving airtime, or even accolades, to vicious, rabid anti-Zionists. I’ll never forget the surreal experience of attending the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards in December and listening to one award recipient give her acceptance speech via video link.
There was a word or two about censorship and repression by the Palestinian authorities – which is real and terrifying, affecting everyone that lives under them – but the vast majority was a cascade of accusations against Israel’s alleged brutality in prisons and the territories.
It took me a second to realise that Index on Censorship wasn’t prepared to simply highlight Palestinian censorship, as I would have expected of an organisation that was sincere as it in its pursuit of the world’s oppressors, without also bashing Israel.
Meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister is under a joke arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, which most of its signatories are choosing to take seriously.
Sir Keir Starmer has refused to confirm that Bibi wouldn’t be arrested on British soil.
Only Hungary and Germany have said they would not arrest Netanyahu; Poland has offered this week not to arrest him if he travels to Poland for the Auschwitz ceremonies.
There is still a sense of decorum that requires showing respect for the Holocaust, even as fake news, conspiracy theory and the fuelling of rabid anti-Zionism has increasingly chipped away at it.
Since October 7, that decorum has rung particularly hollow, since so many of those who follow it won’t get involved in Part Two: showing respect for the origins of, and the continued need for the existence of, a safe and strong Israel, the only possible way of making good on the promise of “never again”.
