An Alternative Holocaust Memorial Day Speech For Ireland

With dismay but no surprise I read this rambling, pseudo-academic, morally dubious, Holocaust Memorial Day speech by Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland and among those who taught me Political Science at what is now the University of Galway.

I first thought of writing a point-by-point refutation of some of the claims it makes but instead wrote what I would have said in his place. Something like this…

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First, let me say that neither I nor any representatives of Ireland have any right to open our mouths on Holocaust Memorial Day. Ireland chose to stay out of the war that defeated Nazi Germany, a defeat that resulted in stopping the Holocaust before it could be completed. When there was the opportunity to protect Jewish lives we chose to put our own interests first. That’s what states do.

The reasons for staying out of the war were the protection granted to us by our geographic isolation – we stayed out because we could - and a reluctance to openly cooperate with the UK, a state that had recently visited terror on us, as it did on many occasions over the centuries. Those reasons aren’t ignoble but stay out we did as the Jews were shot, gassed and burned in their millions.

We could offer a plea for mitigation in that discreet assistance was given to the British right from the start and this accelerated as soon as the Americans joined the war.

But still, we stayed out.

Who can commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz with a clean conscience? Not the Russians. They were allies of the Nazis till June 1941 and the destruction of Polish sovereignty with their German friends facilitated the Holocaust. Not the Americans. It took Pearl Harbour to force them into full participation in the war. Not the British. They did their damndest to keep Jews fleeing the Nazi terror out of Palestine. And not the French. Their police and civil servants assisted the German attempt to eradicate Jewish life in their country forever.

We’re not the only ones who should think about our past record.

Only the Jewish people can fully commemorate the end of the Holocaust and only they have the right to say what lessons should be learned from it, if it’s at all appropriate to use the language of pedagogy about such a moral catastrophe.

The Jews in mandatory Palestine took up arms, some inspired by our own fight for freedom, expelled the British occupiers and forged a state for themselves in their ancient homeland.

They were no longer willing to be dependent on the goodwill of people like us for their survival.

Israel wasn’t gifted to the Jewish people by the West, they took it for themselves.

Along with the neighbouring Arab states the Palestinian Arab population unsuccessfully resisted the birth of the Jewish people’s state. Some fled, and some stayed. Those who stayed today number about 20% of the population.

Israel was born in blood and terror with many left living under the authority of a state they felt was not their own. It also left unresolved territorial claims that gave rise to further violence.

Just like Ireland.

As well as Holocaust survivors the new state took in huge numbers of Jewish refugees from Arab states and saw a flourishing of Jewish culture greater than any since ancient times.

Like any state Israel must be harshly criticised for its crimes and errors, indeed the claim to statehood implies a willingness to answer for the actions of one’s state. The founders of Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, would have expected nothing less.

What cannot be justified is the call for the destruction of Israel based on the supposedly unique and immoral circumstances of its foundation and the supposedly unique nature of the crimes of its governments.

If that call was accompanied by similar ones for the destruction of, say, a dozen other postcolonial states founded on the bones of the losers of various wars then one might object on the issue of practicality if nothing else, but no such calls exist.

Only of the Jews is it demanded that they abandon their national sovereignty and place themselves under the protection of people like us, who did nothing to protect them in the past.

It’s a demand that connects directly to the impulses of those who shot and gassed millions of Jews in Europe in the middle of the twentieth century and those who stood idly by as they did so.

On this solemn day let us be glad that the Holocaust failed to complete its objectives and that the Jewish people took responsibility for their fate in their historic homeland.

Just as we did.

Let us also hope for a prompt end to the conflict between them and the Palestinian people, on terms that only the parties can decide.

And in this and all other international conflicts let us beware of moral narcissism.

We’re nobody special.