Editorial: The UN combats Holocaust denial
Israel became the United Nations’ 59th member on May 11, 1949. In the seven decades since, the General Assembly, now numbering 193 countries, has passed uncounted resolutions blasting the Mideast’s sole democracy. Slander and libel and unfairness by a majority of tyrannies gathered at Turtle Bay against the world’s only Jewish state is mind-numbingly routine.
But at least when it comes to dead Jews, the Parliament of Man has some decency. Only twice in the 73 years since Israel joined the U.N., the General Assembly has approved resolutions offered by Israel, both dealing with the Holocaust.
The first time was 2005, when the General Assembly designated Jan. 27 as the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the Jan. 27, 1945, liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by the Red Army. Israel had 104 co-sponsors.
The second time was Thursday, the 80th anniversary of the Jan. 20, 1942, Wannsee Conference of top Nazis, where the German state planned how to murder all 11 million Jews in Europe. The ever-efficient Germans got about halfway through their victims before the Allies destroyed Hitler’s thousand-year Reich. This resolution denounces Holocaust denial, a sickness of weak minds inextricable from the ancient hatred of antisemitism. Iran, which somehow claims it is guided by Islam, was the single country that objected, but did not block the passage of the resolution, which came without a vote.
Joining Israel as prime sponsor was Germany, and more than 100 states signed on to write into the annals of the United Nations that the Holocaust was real, and that to deny or distort the historical facts is wrong on every level and dangerous to society and needs to be to countered with education. The resolution also urges governments and “social media companies to take active measures to combat antisemitism and Holocaust denial or distortion by means of information and communications technologies and to facilitate reporting of such content.” Let the truth be known.
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