The UN General Assembly is expected to vote on a first-of-its-kind draft resolution requiring states to fight Holocaust denial.
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The draft resolution details requirements and indices for defining Holocaust denial as well as what governments around the world need to do to combat the phenomenon. It will be brought to a vote on Jan. 20, the 80-year anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, where the Nazis planned the systematic destruction of European Jewry.
Following reports social media platforms have been inundated with content denying the Holocaust, the draft was amended to include the unprecedented requirement states act to prevent Holocaust denial on social media. Facebook in particular has been targeted for criticism after the Center for Countering Digital Hate found the tech giant had failed to act on 90% of reports of Holocaust denial on its platform.
Work commenced on the draft proposal, an initiative of Israel's Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan, around one year ago. In recent months, Erdan, the Israeli delegation to the UN, and the Foreign Ministry have been working with officials from various countries around the world to enlist their support for the move. So far, the US and Germany have informed Israel they plan to support the draft proposal, and Israeli delegation members believe it will have the support of a majority of UN members.
Delegation members also emphasized efforts by antisemites to legitimize Holocaust denial in historical and academic research while discussing the draft proposal.
"In the past, the Holocaust was denied under an academic-scientific guise," a delegation member said. "In recent years, with the rise of the internet, this vile phenomenon has grown, and we are seeing more and more statements and actions that try to distort the historical events and deny the Nazis' attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. These are disseminated unchecked and unhindered on social media [platforms]: on TikTok, Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others. Moreover, a lot of online content calls to make the issue of Holocaust denial a legitimate field of historical [research]."
According to the delegation member, the pandemic has also played a role in the rise of Holocaust denial.
"Ever since the outbreak of the pandemic, we started seeing comparisons online between the policies of various countries for contending with the coronavirus to the Nazis' actions in the Holocaust. This, of course, is also a vile phenomenon of contempt for the memory of the Holocaust," the delegation member said.
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