Is it right to use Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration to make points about the situation in Gaza?

[OpheliaWasntMad]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg8jvkk05no

I didn’t say it has relevance above any other conflict. I said it was introduced in the context of the ceasefire. You haven’t explained how Higgins using this example equates him “holding the Jews responsible for it”. I don’t get that from anything he said, clearly you do, so can you explain why you think that’s what he’s doing?

So in what way would a ceasefire in ww2 helped the Jewish people?

I personally feel everyone should be speaking up about Palestine every single day. I think Higgans is an amazing man and many others leaders should be looking at him, and Ireland and learning. He really makes me.proud to be Irish.

I have explained that it’s because he’s singling out this conflict in this context. If it was a general message about war he could have mentioned any other conflict. Yes the ceasefire has just happened but what is the relevance of the ceasefire? It’s only relevant if you think the war in Gaza has special significance for Jews in general.

It’s the same as people spraying ‘Free Palestine’ graffiti on a London Synagogue. The message is that there is a particular relevance to non-Israeli Jewish people and that they are somehow involved or culpable.

Your question doesn’t make any sense, why are you asking me that?

Should I be talking to my Muslim friends about Yemen? Every day?

Because you keep on saying that Gaza was mentioned in the speech because of the ceasefire....I don't understand what the ceasefire to do with the holocaust?

Should we also be talking about Sudan, The DRC, Myanmar and Yemen every day too?

He could have mentioned any conflict, yes. Israel/Gaza is perhaps the most topical and uppermost in news etc at the moment. I don’t know if that’s why he chose this example and pointless me speculating as to his reason. But you are making a huge leap taking his choice of this conflict as implying he believes the Jews to be responsible for it. You’re assuming a sinister motivation without anything in the speech to back that up, not that I can see anyway. I don’t agree with that inference at all.

@humfree @Comedycook I'm sure you can speak to you friends about anyting you want. Why on earth would you need to ask me?

Do you know there's concentration camps in north Korea? Maybe that would have been more relevant to mention in relation to HMD if he was looking for a comparison? Don't you think?

The thing is, it's a distasteful thing to do because the sins of the past are not those of today. They are new cruelties, committed by people who are totally unconnected to the events being remembered.

That makes political, and potentially ill judged. It looks like a finger wag but at who? You don't need to sermonise at a Holocaust memorial. It should speak for itself.

Well you told us we should all be discussing Palestine every day...do you also think it's important to talk about other conflicts?

He’s talking about the ceasefire against the backdrop of what we should have learned from the Holocaust, how war should not be our norm, how we should strive for peace and not default to war. He’s speaking of a world in general that has a lot of hatred and violence in it and how destructive that is and what it can lead to. The ceasefire is offering some hope maybe and he’s hopeful of a more peaceful future. If you read the whole speech it makes absolute sense what he is trying to say, rather than me paraphrasing it for you.

You may of course read different things into it than I have but lots of people already think President Higgins and Irish people generally are anti-semites and that perhaps colours what the heard/read from Higgins.

He could have mentioned lots of other things. The world is a shit place, plenty of examples of hatred and violence and humans committing atrocities against each other. I just don’t think there’s a sinister motive behind his choice of speaking on the Israel/Gaza conflict

He’s talking about the ceasefire against the backdrop of what we should have learned from the Holocaust, how war should not be our norm, how we should strive for peace and not default to war

Were the Jews in ww2 at war with the Nazis then?

You’re not making any sense at all now. I won’t be engaging further with you, make of that what you will, you’ve no interest in a reasonable discussion anyway.

So it’s a well-known anti-Semitic trope that non-Israeli Jews are blamed/responsible for /associated with the actions of Israel. Hence the enormous spike in anti-Semitic crimes in the last year. But the fact that he brought up Gaza on holocaust memorial day was not sinister, just coincidence really. He could have brought up anything but it just happened to be that. Nothing to see here :)

You've been going on and on about the relevance of a ceasefire....and how we should learn the importance of peace. .I. just wondering what you think Jewish people in ww2 should have done in the pursuit of peace?

So the reason to remember the Holocaust is explained:
“It is important that all in each generation and political leaders are made acutely aware of not just the consequences of an attempted genocide, but of the complicit actions of silence, of the averted gaze, of those who, by their culpable indifference, allowed the Holocaust to be planned, prepared and to occur, and of course there were those who refused to respond to the desperate pleas of those who were seeking refuge from it.”….
The hostages and other victims of the horrific 7/10 attack have got to be remembered on the National Holocaust Memorial Day.
”The grief inflicted on families by the horrific acts of October 7th, and the response to it, is unimaginable – the loss of civilian life, the majority women and children, their displacement, loss of homes, the necessary institutions for life itself. How can the world continue to look at the empty bowls of the starving?
The current agreement must end the killing, but, as a matter of urgency, deliver the massive scale-up in humanitarian aid which is urgently needed to save more lives. It is important that all remaining hostages are released and that all phases of the agreement are fully implemented.”
A call for peace and tolerance
“We must work together in our time to ensure that hatred and anti-migrant sentiment, for example, are not permitted to deepen their shadow across Europe and the world.
Hope is an action, not just an aspiration. May we all continue to plant the alternative seeds of hope and peace, seeds that may yield a more harmonious co-existence on this shared, vulnerable planet, enabling us, when we are put to the test, again and again, however unjustly, to choose reconciliation.
May we achieve such an empowering, inclusive, ethical and solemn remembrance as not only reminds us of the depths to which the Holocaust went in building on preceding hatreds, but also make us alert to the rise of xenophobia and the rhetoric of hatred, and encourage us to renew our commitment and our shared responses to human vulnerabilities and possibilities, and may it help in the evolution of our collective consciousness towards one that will share together the joy and fulfilment of peace.”

Imagine giving a speech at a holocaust memorial service and calling it an "attempted genocide" after claiming on several occasions that Israel are enacting an actual genocide in gaza, not even "attempted". He knew what he was doing, he couldnt go one day without getting a dig in at Israel, odious man.

Yes but you were emphatic that we should be talking about Palestine every day, even in contexts where it may not be taken well. I’m just wondering if that holds for equivalent topics or not? Should I go to the mosque and talk about Yemen?

@Kindatired - do you think he was the right person to tell them, or perhaps they already had some pretty good ideas about why remembering it matters?

I don't know who wrote it for him. Terrible

I am in lreland. Our president is not meant to be political but he keeps going over the line and speaking out on topics that are outside his remit. If he wants to speak on these he should step down as our president. He was a former politician and seems to have forgotten he is in a different role now. I would feel the same about all political opinion offered by him. Stick to what you were elected for. He has done this at other times too.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41561824.html

“Ms Degani, a German Jewish woman with Israeli citizenship, was one of those who walked out of the ceremony during the President's speech.…
The speech "deteriorated" when the President "stopped talking about the Holocaust" and instead "launched again into a speech about human rights, then about Israel and Gaza, which was exactly what the community asked him not to do", she said.
Ms Degani said that if the President had wanted to speak about a current event he should have addressed the rise in antisemitism in Ireland.
"He chose to make it again about Israel and Gaza, not even mentioning other conflicts around the world," Ms Degani said.
"Again lecturing the Jewish people in the audience, the Irish Jews, about how we should be, or what we should care about or not. It is diminishing the Holocaust."