Holocaust Memorial Day Trust Prohibits Discussion of Gaza (Again): One Teacher’s Response

Over the past two years, a number of teachers and educators have watched with alarm and frustration as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) has sought to quash discussion of atrocities in Israel and Gaza as part of Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD).

The HMDT has now reiterated its guidance that it “does not recommend” any discussion of Israel and Gaza. Its guidance, which can be found in full here, raises several arguments in support of this position, including that:

• “There are many diverse and strongly felt opinions on current conflicts taking place around the world, and it is important to be clear that HMD is neither a time for commenting on current conflicts, nor for decisiveness.”
• The purpose of HMD is, rather “to commemorate the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and the millions more murdered under Nazi persecution. It is also a day to recognise that prejudice still exists within our communities and to learn and commemorate where persecution led in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.”
• “Opening a discussion or making statements on the conflict [in Israel and Gaza] at an HMD event will be almost certain to divide and upset the audience – whereas HMD seeks to bring people together with a shared purpose. Further, it will take the event further from its central purpose of commemoration of the Holocaust.”
• “Focusing on the situation in Gaza at an HMD event while making no reference to other global conflicts risks appearing one-sided.”

I’ve written twice to the HMDT this year, ahead of HMDT 2025 and again ahead of HMDT 2026 to raise a number of concerns and objections. These have not been in any way addressed by the HMDT’s reissued guidance.

Instead of revisiting old letters, here I’ll offer a critique of the reissued HMDT guidance.

I hope this might offer some constructive thoughts from the perspective of a teacher with an interest in commemorating the Holocaust and other instances of genocide since 1945.

This post is not designed to be any kind of definitive “final word” on the matter, but instead a working through of some of my ongoing thoughts.

In particular, I hope it might be of use to other teachers and educators in a similar position when considering options for commemorating HMD 2026 with young people.

 1.     The guidance contravenes basic principles of Holocaust memorial and HMD

HMD was established by the 2000 Stockholm Declaration, a meeting of 46 governments to set parameters and principles for the commemoration of the Holocaust. These principles were then reaffirmed by the 2020 IHRA Ministerial Declaration, which broadly reaffirmed the Stockholm Declaration.

HMD marks the anniversary each year of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland and therefore focuses primarily on the Holocaust – the mass murder and genocide of some 6 million Jews – along with the mass murder and genocide of other groups at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War, including the Roma and Sinti.

At the same time, the Stockholm Declaration makes plain that commemoration of the Holocaust is not only valuable in its own terms, but central to efforts to combat genocide up to the present day: “With humanity still scarred by genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, the international community shares a solemn responsibility to fight those evils.”

The IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) Ministerial Declaration, in somewhat different terms, reaffirms this broad principle: “[W]e, the IHRA Member Countries […] [r]ecognize that understanding the unprecedented nature of the Holocaust is essential to the prevention of genocide and mass atrocity crimes. IHRA expertise is relevant to historically informed policymaking and addressing contemporary challenges.”

These statements accord the well-established principle in Holocaust education: “Never again”. Although the phrase has been questioned by some for its lack of clarity (“never again” for whom?) and for its failure to reflect the reality of continuing genocide since the Holocaust, “never again” today is widely taken to articulate the belief that the crime of genocide should never go unchallenged. Reflecting this sentiment, the slogan of the 2020 IHRA Ministerial Declaration runs: “A world that remembers the Holocaust/A world without genocide”.

In this sense, the phrase “never again” only has real meaning if it is extended to all peoples, whoever, wherever, and whenever they are. Excluding certain groups from this principle essentially transforms it into “never again for some peoples”. It distorts and ultimately undermines its meaning.

Therefore: the refusal to acknowledge atrocities against the people of Gaza undermines a key principle of Holocaust and genocide commemoration and education, standing as a declaration not that genocide should “never again” happen, but that it should sometimes not happen, depending on the people(s) in question.

 

2.      The guidance sets arbitrary limits on genocide commemoration based on opaque criteria.

In line with its commitments under the Stockholm Declaration and IHRA Ministerial Declaration, HMDT acknowledges a number of genocides since 1945, including in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. In addition to these, the HMDT website also cites instances of genocide “today”, which include the persecution of the Yazidi under so-called Islamic State, the Rohingya in Myanmar (Burma), and the Uyghur in China (Xinjiang province). Significantly, the HMDT states that it “does not make a judgement on which situations meet the legal definition of the crime of genocide” but is “committed to raising awareness of situations where people are persecuted based on their identity.”

“These situations, and many more,” the HMDT states, “demand our attention and action.” Yet the criteria for commemoration set for these instances of genocide and persecution have self-evidently not been applied to the mass killing seen in Israel and Gaza since 7^th October 2023.

Firstly, in discussing genocide today, HMDT cites the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) order for Myanmar to take steps to prevent genocide against the Rohingya in a case brought to by The Gambia in 2020. It fails to acknowledge that the ICJ in January 2024 likewise issued a provisional ruling in relation to Israel’s actions in Gaza, in a case brought by South Africa. This provisional ruling concluded the claim of genocide in Gaza was plausible. Further, it ordered the State of Israel to “take all reasonable measures within [its] power to prevent genocide”, reminding the State of Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in relation to the Palestinian people as a group. The ICJ is expected to give its final judgement on whether or not Israel has committed genocide in Gaza in the coming months or years.

Further, HMDT notes that the case for genocide having been committed in Darfur between 2003 and 2005 rests in considerable part on the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicting then President of Sudan, Omar Al-Bashir, for the crime of genocide. It fails to acknowledge that in November 2024, in relation to mass killings in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant have been likewise indicted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians. In September 2025, a United Nations commission recommended that the crime of genocide be added to these indictments.

It’s also worth noting that, while the HMDT’s guidance is transparently focused on forestalling any mention of Gaza in particular, it has significant implications for the acknowledgement of other (potential) genocides.

This includes the mass killing of Israeli civilians and international civilians in the south of Israel by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighters on 7^th October 2023, which have been credibly described as genocidal in their intent and scope by expert organisations (see below). Indeed, the same November 2024 ICC indictment against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant also indicted Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif for crimes against humanity and war crimes (Deif had, by this time, already been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza).

Most pressingly, given the unfolding situation in Sudan at present, HMDT guidance also undermines commemoration and acknowledgement of (potential) genocide in Darfur, where mass killings and other atrocities are being actively committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Although the Darfur genocide of 2003-2005 is acknowledged by the HMDT, atrocities committed by the RSF – widely recognised around the world as genocidal – appear by the standards of the new HMDT guidance on Gaza to be off-limits for HMD 2026 as they are part of a (to quote the guidance) “current conflict”.

In general, it remains unclear whether HMDT guidance on the Middle East, by prohibiting discussion of "current conflicts", is intended to invalidate its recognition of instances of genocide today or whether this is simply an unanticipated consequence of a poorly thought-through policy. 

Therefore: by setting opaque, arbitrary, and misleading criteria in an attempt to ignore atrocities in Gaza, the HMDT has undermined its own efforts to commemorate genocide since 1945 more broadly.

 

3.      The guidance ignores the expert opinion on the mass killing in Israel and Gaza

While the HMDT describes the mass killing in Israel and Gaza as part of a current “conflict”, this judgement does not acknowledge a huge body of expert opinion that recognise mass killings in the region as genocidal in nature.

Atrocities committed by Hamas and PIJ in the south of Israel on 7^th October 2023 have been credibly described as genocidal by a number of groups and organisations, including Genocide Watch and the Lemkin Institute.

Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has, much more widely, been credibly described as genocidal by a huge number of groups, organisations, independent experts, and humanitarian workers, including:

• Palestinian human rights organisations Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and Palestinian Center for Human Rights;
• Israeli human rights organisations B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights;
• global human rights organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Federation of Human Rights, and University Network for Human Rights;
• global humanitarian organisations including Medecins San Frontières and Oxfam;
• genocide prevention and monitoring organisations Genocide Watch and Lemkin Institute;
• genocide scholars and scholarly organisations, including International Association of Genocide Scholars;
• United Nations experts, including United Nations International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

In September 2025, following the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry of the Occupied Palestinian Territory’s declaration that genocide is being committed in the Gaza Strip, the leaders of 26 major international aid organisations urged the world to intervene, warning that if nations around the world “continue to treat [their] legal obligations [to prevent genocide] as optional, they are not only complicit but are setting a dangerous precedent for the future.

To present the mass killing of Israelis and other civilians on 7^th October 2023 and of Palestinians in Gaza since then as simply a current “conflict” wilfully ignores the credibly genocidal nature of these atrocities and is plainly misleading. It also conflicts openly with the expert opinion of organisations on whose opinion HMDT otherwise relies and whose work HMDT publicises, most notably Genocide Watch, whose ten stages of genocide model is central to HMDT commemorative efforts.

Given that the ICJ is set to rule at some point in the future on whether Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, it remains to be seen whether HMDT will acknowledge this legal ruling or will simply contrive new ways to avoid mention of Gaza in its future commemoration of genocide since 1945.

Therefore: the HMDT’s refusal to acknowledge mass killings in Israel and Gaza and their misrepresentation of these as part of an ongoing “conflict” openly contradicts expert opinion which must be taken into account when considering genocide since 1945 and to the present day.

 4.      Concluding Thoughts

The HMDT guidance is, this year as last, hugely disappointing. It should worry teachers and other educators looking to meaningfully commemorate and examine the Holocaust and genocide since 1945.

It places us in an invidious position, stuck between two unacceptable options. Either we accept and seek to justify to our students guidance which is morally and intellectually unjustifiable, or we reject the guidance and distance ourselves from the UK’s leading Holocaust commemoration organisation.

As teachers and educators, we must be able to judge, based on the needs of our student community, which events alongside the Holocaust are commemorated as part of HMD 2026. We may choose for legitimate reasons not to discuss Israel and Gaza. Yet it is plainly unacceptable that we should be prohibited from doing so by HMDT.

The mass killing in Israel and Gaza since 2023 has rightly attracted the attention of young people in Britain. It is a hugely contentious issue which does, indeed, divide people and communities. Yet refusing to acknowledge it will only drive discussions amongst young people underground and out of sight. In this case, teachers and educators will be able to neither moderate those discussions nor to model the appropriate, sensitive, and informed discourse which is so desperately needed. Instead, young people will be left vulnerable to unregulated channels of potentially misleading, harmful, and hateful (mis-)information. They may be drawn into the sphere of extremists with no legitimate concern for commemoration of the Holocaust or genocide since 1945. This in turn may leave young people vulnerable to radicalisation.

The choice is simple. As teachers and educators, we either embrace and own the conversation or we surrender all control over it.

With regards HMDT, the question of which atrocities and (potential) genocides can be commemorated should be acknowledged as an existential one. If it is to live up to the standards it sets itself, HMDT must not prohibit discussion of any atrocities that can be credibly described as genocide. If it cannot live up to these standards, it should consider carefully what purpose it actually serves as an anti-genocide organisation.

In the meantime, teachers and educators must be able to make informed decisions as to how we approach the commemoration of the Holocaust and genocide since 1945.

 

NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: “Genocide” is a legally defined term, based on the UN’s genocide convention (which can be accessed here). As such, without attempting to demonstrate that particular atrocities do meet the legal definition of genocide, I have referred to cases of “(potential) genocide” or cases that have been “credibly” described outside a court of law as genocide. This is in no way intended to downplay the significance or severity of these atrocities.