Never again?

By Joseph Millis - Thursday 26th January 2012


As we mark Holocaust Memorial Day, one in five Germans still holds anti-Semitic views and Iran is continuing on the path to nuclear weapons...

As Europe this week marks Holocaust Memorial Day, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged the world not to "sit idly by" and let Iran develop a nuclear programme that might bring about another genocide. His warning came as a report by Germany's Parliament suggested one in five of the population had a "latent" hatred for Jews.

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Addressing the Knesset on Tuesday in a debate marking HMD - Israel marks its own Holocaust remembrance day on Yom Hashoah - Netanyahu said: "This is a day when the world needs to commit not to allow another genocide and to act so weapons of mass destruction don't reach the hands of Iran's ayatollahs. Only a combination of sanctions and putting all the options on the table can make Iran stop."

He added: "We can't stick our heads in the sand. The Iranian regime's emissaries, Hamas and Hizbollah, have already fired thousands of missiles at us, but when there are those who try to belittle or deny those who are warning of the danger, they apparently haven't learned their lesson. The lesson is that the countries of the world must be roused to act against the threat while there is still time." He also noted that post-Holocaust genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Sudan took place when the world intervened too late.

And US President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, also warned Iran - just as a flotilla of US, French and British naval ships entered the Straits of Hormuz, which Tehran had threatened to block.

Obama said a peaceful resolution of the Iran nuclear dispute was still possible if Tehran changed course and met international obligations. He said the ayatollahs were "more isolated than ever before [and] faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent. America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal."

Meanwhile, a German parliamentary report, timed to coincide with HMD and the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, during which senior Nazis sealed the fate of European Jewry, found hatred of Jews is common among large swathes of German society and not just within the confines of the far-right or Islamists. The word "Jew" was already being used as a playground insult by young children, the report found. In football leagues throughout Germany, from the amateur game to the professional teams, anti-Semitic jeers aimed at Jewish teams are common, including "Jews to the gas", "Bring back Auschwitz" and "Burn the synagogues".

One of the report's authors, Dr Peter Longerich, wrote: "Anti-Semitism in our society is based on widespread prejudices, cliches with deep roots and pure ignorance about everything to do with Jews and Judaism."

The committee of experts was appointed by the Bundestag in 2008, the 70th anniversary of the Nazis' Kristallnacht pogrom, as part of a parliamentary bid to boost Germany's efforts to fight anti-Semitism. The committee was supposed to give the Bundestag reports as well as ideas for combating Jew-hatred. The study criticised the way Germany dealt with anti-Semitism. "There is no comprehensive strategy for fighting anti-Semitism in Germany," said another of the authors, Dr Juliane Wetzel.

The Board of Deputies' Jon Benjamin said: "Anti-Semitism in Germany has a particular resonance for obvious historical reasons, but it also remains a real and, in some cases, growing problem elsewhere in Europe. That a significant number of Germans harbour negative feelings towards Jews is shocking in light of that country's past, but it just goes to show that anti-Semitism is a light sleeper."

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