(United Nations) The UN General Assembly on Thursday adopted by consensus a non-binding resolution proposed by Israel calling on all states to fight Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, including on social media.
Posted yesterday at 3:47 p.m.
The text with strong political significance even without being legally binding, developed with the assistance of Germany, was co-sponsored by 114 countries out of the 193 that make up the UN.
Iran has formally marked its opposition to the text, claiming to “dissociate” from it.
The resolution “rejects and condemns without reservation any denial of the historicity of the Holocaust, total or partial”, which saw between 1939 and 1945 the genocide of six million European Jews by the Nazis and their supporters.
The text “urges all member states to reject without reservation any denial or distortion of the Holocaust as a historical event” and “congratulates” countries that preserve “sites that served as death camps, concentration camps, forced labor camps, execution grounds and Nazi prisons during the Holocaust”.
The resolution also urges UN members to “develop educational programs that will instill in the minds of future generations the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help prevent acts of genocide”, and calls on them, as well as to companies managing social networks, “to take active measures to combat anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial or distortion”.
Yaïr Lapid, Israeli Foreign Minister, and his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock welcomed the adoption of the resolution in a joint statement, proof that the international community “speaks with one voice” on this subject.
Worried about the “dramatic rise” of Holocaust denial, the two ministers also denounced “the comparisons between current political conflicts and the Holocaust”, which constitute an “injustice” for the victims.
Dani Dayan, director of the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, called on him to “redouble our efforts” to support Holocaust research and education.
In a statement, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, welcomed in advance a “historic resolution”, negotiated for several months and which is the “second initiated by Israel to be approved by the General Assembly”.
The first, in 2005, made every January 27 an international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust.
The resolution adopted Thursday, “gives for the first time a clear definition of Holocaust denial”, “calls on countries to take action in the fight against anti-Semitism” and asks the giants of the Internet (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to fight against hateful content on social networks, the Israeli statement said.