News - Middle East: The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has called for the boycott of the 2025 Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations after a state-run charity that holds the event refused to include what is coming to pass against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip in the list of genocides.

The London-based organization said in a letter to 460 councils and universities across the United Kingdom that the HMD Trust’s move to disregard the Israeli regime’s atrocities in Gaza is in contravention of the charity’s mission, which “makes clear that genocide is not restricted to a particular period of history, geographical area or group of people.”

Underlining that such consideration should remain at the forefront of any remembrance of the Holocaust, the IHRC said, “There is no hierarchy of genocides or suffering and the fact of remembrance is not limited by the background of either the victims or the perpetrators of any of the genocides. Every genocide is unique and all are morally abhorrent.”

Expressing grave concern and great disappointment over the absence of the ongoing genocide in Gaza from the list of genocides mentioned by HMD, the London-based organization said the failure to include it in commemorations would undermine the aim of marking the Holocaust which is purportedly to help prevent further genocides and to put a stop to genocides when they occur.

The NGO pointed to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the US-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, among others, as entities that have defined the Israeli atrocities in Gaza as tantamount to genocide.

“In view of the overwhelming evidence pointing to the crime of genocide being perpetrated in Gaza, it is imperative that if HMD is to retain any credibility as a commemoration, it must be universal in scope and inclusive and recognize the genocide currently unfolding in Gaza,” IHRC president Massoud Shadjareh wrote in the letter.

“It is also imperative that if we are to remain faithful to the aim of stopping current and preventing future genocides that we include the genocide that is unfolding in our time.”

Stressing that HMD Trust’s failure to include the Gaza genocide bespeaks racial exclusivism, Shadjareh called for the boycott of the commemoration and replacing it with alternatives that recognize the horrific genocide taking place before the world's eyes.

“We have suspected for a long time that HMD promotes the exceptionalisation of genocide through the Nazi Holocaust. Any failure to include the actual genocide that is unfolding so graphically in our own time gives the lie to the slogan “Never Again”, exposing it as a political device to promote one genocide over all others. Civil society cannot allow the Gaza genocide to be legitimized by the misappropriation of the Nazi Holocaust.”HMD Trust is a government-funded charity that established Holocaust Memorial Day in 2001, hosting events every year in January to mark the Nazi Holocaust and promote its commemoration among schools, universities, councils, prisons and other bodies.`
the IHRC wrote to the HMD Trust on November 27 and requested that it include Gaza among the acts of genocide being commemorated in January but has yet to received a reply.
Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed at least 45,059 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured more than 107,041 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.
The Israeli military has been constructing infrastructure and large facilities in Gaza as it plans to remain in the besieged Palestinian territory at least until the end of 2025, according to media reports.
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