From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: Jew-hatred struts the stage in Berlin
In his book The End of the Holocaust, Alvin Rosenfeld observed that the Anne Frank story has been re-framed to articulate the need to overcome racism and homophobia, prevent mass murder and promote tolerance and kindness.
Jews like Anne Frank, however, were wiped out not because of a lack of tolerance or kindness or through prejudice but because of a derangement beyond comprehension directed at the Jewish people.
In Mosaic in 2016, Edward Rothstein wrote that Holocaust museums flinched from emphasising the uniqueness of Jewish suffering. No such museum, he observed, could seemingly be complete without invoking other 20th-century genocides in Rwanda, Darfur or Cambodia.
If we are all guilty, though, then no-one is guilty. More balefully still, if everyone can be a Nazi, so too can the Jews. Holocaust universalism has thus led directly to the demonisation of Israel by people claiming to be anti-racist.
In Britain, this is one reason why there have been strenuous objections to the Holocaust memorial and education centre that the government wants to construct in a small park next to the Houses of Parliament.
The project has been derailed by the late discovery of a planning law that forbids any such construction in this park, a law that the government is determined to overturn.
Aside from environmental objections, significant...Read More
