Holocaust Memorial Day, just without the Jews
On Tuesday, we remembered the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered in the Holocaust.
We paused for the dead.
For the six million Jews murdered.
For the 1.5 million children.
For voices silenced.
For families erased.
“If this country is to learn any lessons from the Holocaust, it’s surely got to be that action is required right now to reverse this trend – and sadly we don’t see enough being done.”
That is the message that CAA Chief Executive Gideon Falter took to the media this week to discuss how we should think about Holocaust Memorial Day at a time of surging levels of antisemitism.
“We’re not doing a great job on the ‘Never Again’ front.”
You can watch Gideon on TalkTV here, or on LBC here.
We also spoke with Our Fight UK’s Mark Birbeck, one of the Jewish community’s staunchest allies over the past two years, about remembrance and the dangers of forgetting history. You can watch the video here.
However, not everyone remembered that the Holocaust had something to do with Jews.
Here are the commemorative social media posts from all the major political parties.
Can you spot the odd one out?
And not everyone used the occasion to learn any lessons.
Outside the London School of Economics (LSE), a speech was delivered declaring that “We will build our fighting power to confront Zionism in our institutions across the country.”
But while universities may have not taken the day seriously, at least one football club did.
Manchester United marked Holocaust Memorial Day by spotlighting the father of one of their fans, who was a Holocaust survivor.
Mayer Bomsztyk survived Buchenwald concentration camp and rebuilt his life in Manchester after the war, forging a strong connection to the city and to the football culture embedded within it. The club published an article recounting his life story, which you can access here.
Last year, Man U also set up a Jewish Supporters Club to celebrate and unite their many Jewish fans and improve their connection to the club.
What a beautiful way to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and show solidarity with their Jewish fans, in a city still reeling from a terrorist attack last year.
It’s one thing after another at the BBC
Among the institutions that seemed to forget that it was Jews who perished in the Holocaust was our national broadcaster.
“Buildings will be illuminated to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, which commemorates the six million people murdered by the Nazi regime,” audiences were told.
“People”. Not Jews.
Even on Holocaust Memorial Day, the BBC cannot bring itself to properly address antisemitism.
It is no wonder that an overwhelming 92% of British Jews rate the BBC’s coverage of matters of Jewish interest as unfavourable, according to our polling.
This omission persisted throughout the day, eventually resulting in an apology from the BBC.
The one thing that the apology forgot to mention was…the Jews.
They said: “In the news bulletins on Today and in the introduction to the story on BBC Breakfast there were references to Holocaust Memorial Day which were incorrectly worded, and for which we apologise.”
They added that “we will be issuing a correction on our website.”
Even the apology did not reference Jews.
There is a sickness at the BBC.
Our Director of Investigations and Enforcement, Stephen Silverman, spoke to Nick Ferrari on LBC and to other broadcasters to explain how the BBC once again got it so badly wrong.
The Holocaust Memorial Day debacle came a day after the BBC omitted to mention Jews in its television coverage of a project relating to the Battle of Cable Street (although it was mentioned on the website).
These two controversies were not enough for the BBC, however.
BBC Radio 1 then premiered a new song by Kneecap which brands Sir Keir Starmer “Netanyahu’s b**** and genocide armer”.
Liars Tale is a new song by the scandalous Irish rap group that focuses on the British Prime Minister’s stance on Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
The notion that Jews or the Jewish state wield outsized political influence or power is a classic trope.
A member of Kneecap recently had a terrorism case against him thrown out over a technicality after footage appeared to show him displaying a Hizballah flag and saying “Up Hamas, Up Hizballah” at a concert in London.
One would have imagined that the BBC might, after so many scandals relating to the Jewish community, steer clear of this band, especially regarding any rhetoric on Israel.
But no, our national broadcaster simply cannot help itself.
It is essentially just trolling the Jewish community now.
But that too was not enough.
A senior employee at the BBC was also in recent days found to have a controversial social media presence, with multiple posts allegedly containing hateful discourse towards Jewish people.
Tom Poole, who has worked at the BBC for over sixteen years, allegedly posted about a “Jewish pile on” in a now-deleted tweet responding to criticism of the BBC’s Holocaust Memorial Day coverage, after it repeatedly referred to six million Jews as “six million people”.
When commenting on the events of West Midlands Police’s ban of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from their Aston Villa game, which led to police chief Craig Guildford’s retirement, he allegedly blamed “a Jewish lobby. Or Jewish £ backed media.”
This rhetoric is simply outrageous, but worse still is that practically nobody will be surprised that someone at the BBC is spouting such vitriol.
Clearly Mr Poole needs to be sacked.
But this whack-a-mole routine with BBC personnel will not alone address the fundamental cultural problems at our national broadcaster. We continue to call for an independent investigation into BBC bias on coverage relating to Israel and matters of Jewish concern.
Until such time, the licence fee should be suspended.
You can add your name to the tens of thousands on our petition at suspendthelicencefee.com.
It’s not just the BBC
At least two former media executives have revealed their odious views about the Jewish state and Holocaust Memorial Day.
Here is Peter Grimsdale, a former Channel 4 commissioner for religion, implying that Israel is comparable to the Nazis in a recent letter to The Sunday Times.
According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism.
Sadly it is no longer surprising when we discover that a British media executive has a negative view of the Jewish state. This has become increasingly normalised, as is the lack of any outcry.
This is not a one-off. Mr Grimsdale has form.
This is not even a former foreign affairs executive but a commissioner focused on religion. Even in that precinct the Jews just can’t catch a break.
But he is also not alone.
Here is a former political editor of The Guardian suggesting that it is not correct to say that six million Jewish people were murdered in the Holocaust, and that raising concerns about the highest levels of antisemitism in living memory (without, presumably, accepting that really it is the fault of the Jews because of Gaza) is self-absorbed.
It is less likely that these former media executives and editors have adopted new views since retiring; it is more likely that they always had these views, allowing them to colour their output, but now they are free to say them aloud.
Protests and policy
They may receive less attention in the media these days, but the hate marches and other symbols of hate persist.
A woman apparently dressed in the uniform worn by Jewish concentration camp prisoners, with a yellow Islamic crescent and star, an obvious allusion to the yellow star that the Nazis forced the Jews to wear, stood outside Parliament in the days following Holocaust Memorial Day. She heckled the Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Timothy MP, who has fearlessly campaigned on a number of antisemitism-related issues.
According to the Metropolitan Police, a woman was arrested outside Parliament on suspicion of a racially/religiously aggravated public order offence.
The virtue-signallers, far-left extremists and Islamists once again stormed through London together this weekend to demonise the world’s only Jewish state, less than a week after Holocaust Memorial Day.
Despite the fact that a ceasefire is now in place, fanatics obsessed with Israel continuously cause disruption supposedly in the name of human rights. Even though the world has just learned that the Iranian regime may have murdered tens of thousands of people in a couple of days, possibly more than died in Gaza over two years, and these Iranians are all indisputably civilians, the priority of those marching today was inevitably to protest against the Jewish state.
According to our YouGov polling, a sizeable majority of 69% believe that the Palestine marches are achieving not very much or nothing at all; only 13% believe that they are achieving something.
Those marching have once again revealed themselves for what they truly are – extremists – and Brits have had enough of this.
Do you know who this man is?
Amidst the shocking scenes in Central London this weekend, we saw a plethora of disturbing placards and chants. One of these was the call to remove Hizballah, Hamas and Palestine Action from the list of banned terror groups.
If you have information about this man, please e-mail [email protected].
Police forces have hoped that the challenges posed by these persistent protests and marches would dissipate. Not only have they not, but the extremists have become emboldened after over two years of inaction by the authorities, culminating in a deadly antisemitic terrorist attack at a synagogue.
That attack prompted the Home Secretary to announce a review of public order and hate crime legislation led by Lord Macdonald of River Glaven KC, to which CAA has provided a major and detailed submission.
With a majority of British Jews feeling unsafe, lacking confidence in the criminal justice system and no longer seeing a future in the UK, policing has to change in this country.
‘Globalise the Intifada’ arrests
The Metropolitan Police have announced that three protestors who were arrested at a demonstration in December after allegedly calling for “intifada” have been charged.
The three defendants, Haya Adam, 21, Abdallah Alanzi, 24, and Azza Zaki, 60, have been charged with using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intention to stir up racial hatred, in connection with a protest outside the Ministry of Justice on 17th December 2025.
It is the first prosecution of its kind, after the Met and Greater Manchester Police declared last month that they would finally start to arrest those alleged to be chanting these aggressive slogans.
The hearing is due to take place at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in February.
This is a welcome but belated first step towards accountability for those over the past two years who have called or are alleged to have called for violence against Jews. We will monitor this case with great interest.
Britain is too late to lead, but it can follow
The EU has announced that it is designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.
We strongly welcome this decision by the EU Council and member states.
We have been calling on the UK Government to do so for years.
Following that announcement, the Home Office confirmed that it now intends to do the same.
Prior to the general election, Labour promised to proscribe the IRGC, but after taking office appeared to renege on the pledge, saying that some more sanctions would have to do.
We did not accept this outcome, and neither did a number of backbench MPs who also consistently advocated for a ban.
Thousands of you signed our petition at antisemitism.org/BanTheIRGC to urge the Government to keep its word.
The IRGC is the paramilitary arm of the Iranian regime. Like the theocratic government, the IRGC is a relentless promoter of violence and antisemitic hatred in the Middle East, and has murdered untold thousands of Iranians fighting for freedom.
After the EU’s announcement, Britain has been embarrassed into doing the right thing.
The Home Office has now agreed to introduce legislation to enable it to proscribe state agencies like the IRGC, but disappointingly will not fast track the law.
Britain lost the chance to show moral leadership, with ministers saying just in recent weeks that they would break their pre-election promise to ban the IRGC. Now we are left isolated on the world stage as one of the few leading democracies that still allows the IRGC to operate freely on its soil.
The UK should at least now hastily follow the rest of the free world and do the right thing by speedily banning the terrorist IRGC.
Jewish stereotypes
Kanye West has apologised for his history of comments and recycled archaic conspiracies referring to Jewish people.
It’s hard to keep up with Kanye West’s apologies and relapses. A heartfelt apology is nice but at the end of the day it is meaningless if it is followed by more of the same, which is what has happened before.
Real contrition might start with telling his online followers, whose number is greater than there are Jews in the world, why antisemitism is so corrosive.
Until then, we are doing our part to expose what people think about Jewish stereotypes and educate the public, especially younger generations.
You can watch the full video here.
We are recruiting!
Do you want to use your communications skills to raise awareness of antisemitism?
We are looking for a Senior Communications and Research Officer. More information is available here.
Do you want to help combat antisemitism and empower Jewish students?
We are also looking for a School and Campus Educator. Find out more here.
The connection between the antisemitism of the past and anti-Jewish racism of today cannot be ignored.
It is no good going through the motions of remembering the Holocaust if you are not prepared to acknowledge that Jewish people were and are victims, whether of the Nazis back then or of the extremists today.
Some are ready to make that connection, like the Isle of Man, which adopted the International Definition of Antisemitism on Holocaust Memorial Day.
The best way of honouring the memory of the dead is by standing up to antisemitism now.
