Sixty Years On

Yesterday the United Nations General Assembly met in special session to commemorate sixty years since the freeing of the death camps and the end to the Holocaust.

The Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in his usual smarmy, quasi-sincere fashion, was moved to say that, in large measure because of the Holocaust, the United Nations was founded. True. But then why is this the first time in the past sixty years that a commemoration takes place?

But let us look at the commemoration itself. The UN is composed of 191 member states. Most of them did not even bother to show up for the session. Only 35 of the 191 members nations chose to speak, with Jordan the only Arab country to avail itself of the opportunity. Well, if the UN was founded in large measure because of the Holocaust, then yesterday's performance is the best possible evidence that it is time for the UN to graciously disappear.

Had this been a special session to discuss imagined Palestinian rights, the debate would have continued for days. Speakers would have vied to outdo each other in the vilification of Israel and the Jews. The media would have devoted endless time, staff and resources to publicize each inane comment as if the future of the world depended on it.

This special session, on the other hand, was concluded in a matter of hours. The commemoration of the seminal event in the creation of the UN was marked almost apologetically, and only after the passage of sixty long, lamentable years, during which anti-semitism continues to rear its ugly head.

This coming Thursday, January 27, marks the 60th anniversary of the freeing of Auschwitz. The poor emaciated souls that were set free that day were but a minute percentage of the approximately 1.5 million Jews who met their untimely deaths at the hands of Nazi butchers in that camp alone. To see pictures of those freed that day is chilling in the extreme. But can we even imagine the 1.5 million corpses burned in the crematoria after the most painful and horrendous deaths. And why? Simply because they were Jews.

In total, in excess of 6 million Jews perished in this beastly manner. Finally, sixty years on, the General Assembly of the UN has acknowledged this fact. Even Kofi Annan was moved to say, "never again!". However, nowhere have I read that Mahmoud Abbas has finally disavowed his Holocaust-denying doctoral thesis.

On Thursday more than 150 bloggers around the world will be commemorating what happened 60 years ago by means of a blogburst. This, in large measure, is thanks to Joseph Alexander Norland at http://www.israpundit.com. Hopefully, many more will join. Should you wish to do so go to http://blogburstinfo.blogspot.com/.