UK prime minister Theresa May. PA Wire/PA Images. All rights reserved.In 1981, a wise Israeli journalist called Boaz Evron observed that the Jewish people endured two tragedies in the twentieth century. One of course was the Holocaust. The second, he suggested more controversially, was what he termed “the lessons drawn from it” by those in power in Israel. These were the narrow nationalist lessons that “Never Again” applied to the Jews alone, rather than humanity in general; that anti-semitism was different from other forms of racism; that threats to Israel were always existential; that critics of Israel were always motivated by anti-semitism, and many of them really wanted to perpetrate a second Holocaust.
In Evron’s view, the main aims of Holocaust awareness perpetuated by Israeli politicians and mainstream media, and through Israel’s education system, were “not at all an understanding of the past but a manipulation of the present” (my emphasis).
My mind drifted back to Evron’s words when I heard that the UK prime minister Theresa May had decided that she wanted to adopt a definition of anti-semitism drawn up by a group called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), and turn it into law in Britain. May says this will enable her government to tackle rising anti-semitism.
