{"id":76930,"date":"2015-10-14T06:55:41","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T14:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=76930"},"modified":"2023-09-09T15:02:19","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T23:02:19","slug":"the-un-plays-the-holocaust-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=76930","title":{"rendered":"The UN Plays The Holocaust Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

From The Guardian<\/a>: <\/p>\n

The dehumanising language used by UK and other European politicians to debate the refugee crisis<\/a> has echoes of the pre-second world war rhetoric with which the world effectively turned its back on German and Austrian Jews and helped pave the way for the Holocaust<\/a>, the UN\u2019s most senior human rights official has warned.<\/p>\n

Zeid Ra\u2019ad Al Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights<\/a>, described Europe\u2019s response to the crisis as amnesiac and \u201cbewildering\u201d. Although he did not mention any British politicians by name, he said the use of terms such as \u201cswarms of refugees\u201d were deeply regrettable.<\/p>\n

In July, the UK prime minister, David Cameron, referred to migrants in Calais as a \u201cswarm of people\u201d<\/a>. At this month\u2019s Conservative party conference, the home secretary, Theresa May, was widely criticised<\/a> for suggesting that mass migration made it \u201cimpossible to build a cohesive society\u201d.
\nIn an interview, the high commissioner said the language surrounding the issue reminded him of the 1938 Evian conference<\/a>, when countries including the US, the UK and Australia refused to take in substantial numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler\u2019s annexation of Austria on the grounds that they would destabilise their societies and strain their economies. Their reluctance, Zeid added, helped Hitler to conclude that extermination could be an alternative to deportation.<\/p>\n

Three-quarters of a century later, he said, the same rhetoric was being deployed by those seeking to make political capital out of the refugee crisis. \u201cIt\u2019s just a political issue that is being ramped up by those who can use the excuse of even the smallest community as a threat to the sort of national purity of the state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you just look back to the Evian conference and read through the intergovernmental discussion, you will see that there were things that were said that were very similar.
\n\u201cIndeed, at the time, the Australian delegate said that if Australia accepted large numbers of European Jews<\/a> they\u2019d be importing Europe\u2019s racial problem into Australia. I\u2019m sure that in later years, he regretted that he ever said this \u2013 knowing what happened subsequently \u2013 but this is precisely the point. If we cannot forecast the future, at least we have the past as a guide that should wisen us, alert us to the dangers of using that rhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether he believed that May would also come to regret her choice of words, Zeid added: \u201cCloser examination of history and a closer examination of what happened in Europe<\/a> in the early part of the 20th century should make people think very carefully about what it is that they\u2019re saying. These are human beings: even in the use of the word migrants, somehow it\u2019s as if they don\u2019t have rights. They all have rights just as we have rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the high commissioner praised the British government\u2019s decision to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees<\/a> between now and 2020, he said much more needed to be done. He pointed to the suggestion made by François Crépeau, the UN special rapporteur on the human right of migrants, that rich European countries should agree a plan<\/a> to take 1 million refugees from Syria over the next five years.<\/p>\n

Zeid added that his country, Jordan, had taken in more than 650,000 refugees<\/a> from Syria and Iraq while some European politicians had descended into \u201cxenophobia and in some cases outright racism\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because of the Holocaust, we can’t have nice things. We have to import the world’s trash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From The Guardian: The dehumanising language used by UK and other European politicians to debate the refugee crisis has echoes of the pre-second world war rhetoric with which the world effectively turned its back on German and Austrian Jews and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[605,182,161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-semitism","category-australia","category-immigration"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76930"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151429,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76930\/revisions\/151429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}