Holocaust Memorial Day Trust prohibits discussion of Gaza (again): one teacher’s response
JVL Introduction
Alistair Dickins writes about the alarm and frustration caused by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s inability to face up to the atrocities in Gaza.
On the day set aside to remember and to remind ourselves of the lesson of the Holocaust – Never again, to anyone! – it declares “it is neither a time for commenting on current conflicts nor for decisiveness”.
How can you bring people together “with the shared purpose” which includes recognising “that prejudice still exists within our communities” without alluding to current realities as appropriate?
As Dickins says, the guidance the HMDT offers
- contravenes basic principles of Holocaust memorial and HMD
- sets arbitrary limits on genocide commemoration based on opaque criteria; and
- ignores the expert opinion on the mass killing in Israel and Gaza
“As teachers and educators,”, Dickins writes, “we must be able to judge, based on the needs of our student community, which events alongside the Holocaust are commemorated as part of HMD 2026. We may choose for legitimate reasons not to discuss Israel and Gaza. Yet it is plainly unacceptable that we should be prohibited from doing so by HMDT.”
RK
This article was originally published by Istorik on Fri 21 Nov 2025. Read the original here.
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust prohibits discussion of Gaza (again): one teacher’s response
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This is not, of course, surprising, because Holocaust Memorial Day was not set up to make people aware of all genocides.
That is why it is time limited. No holocausts before the Nazi holocaust is allowed and then the Nazi holocaust is only reserved for Jews. Others who died like the Roma & Sinti were victims of ‘Nazi Persecution’.
But of course the overriding aim, albeit unstated of course, is that the Nazi holocaust is weaponised in the service of western imperialism and its attack dog in the Middle East, the ‘Jewish’ State of Israel. It is therefore beyond the bounds of permissibility for HMD to be used to allege that Israel too is committing a holocaust. That is simply unthinkable.
And of course HMD is not alone Every single holocaust memorial organisation does the same. Indeed the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum, which put on Instagram a graphic of intertwined hands accompanied by an explanation that Never Again is not just reserved for Jews was deluged with complaints that they were targeting Israel.
Not only did they take it down, they apologised, for having been careless!
However our HMD event is not limited by imperialist sensitivities. Speakers include Ilan Pappe, Ghada Karmi, Stephen Kapos, Suzanne Weiss, Rania Khalek and myself.
To register go to https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GO7EfxtSQ8a75R6yQvkpsw
We can all do our bit to include the etnic cleansing of Palestinians into our Holocaust Memorial Day events. I challenged fellow-Jews and others during last year events and will do so this year too. I am exercising my right to free speech, common sense and peaceful protest.
In equating the violence of the Hamas and other fighters on October 7th 2023 in the ethnically cleansed lands to the North and East of Gaza (currently in “Israel”) with that of the Israeli Apartheid state ever since that date, this piece runs dangerously close to the Mercutio position in Romeo and Juliet – “a plague on both your houses!” But he was comparing the antics of two wealthy Verona families, not an occupier and an occupied – and he was at the point of a death caused by their feud.
There are several factual problems too: how many Israelis and visitors were killed by Israeli helicopter and tank fire, in the traditions of the Hannibal doctrine? How can any Israeli data be trusted given the early stories – repeated by Biden as Gospel – of beheaded babies and sadistic attacks on pregnant women?
And, as Norman Finkelstein has pointed out, with his reference to the Nat Turner Slave rebellion of 1831 in Virginia, the instructions were to kill all whites they encountered as they attempted to escape. Did this make the escaping slaves just as racist as their masters?
If you rejoice at the deaths of any human beings, you’re not understanding the loss to humanity (especially yours) of the events you are part of, but to equate the violence of people who have broken out of what Finkelstein describes as a concentration camp with that of those who built the camp is surely a step too far.
Time to form a new Genocide Memorial Day that does not limit itself to only some Genocides
HMD used to be better in the 200s — not the official event of course which was always self-congratulating and cringey and is now absolutely offensive in its onesidedness — but there was space for some very moving and open local events. Increasingly the space for these has been cut down, first by council cuts (no more equalities officers for example) but recently by outright attacks. Anyone trying a ‘Never Again for Anyone’ approach in any public venue would not only lose the hosts their funding but get the organisers and participants viciously attacked and possibly in danger of losing their livelihoods. So yes please to alternative HMDs/ genocide memorial days, but are we going to be forced to hold them in our houses with the blinds down? There’s a historical precedent for that, of course!