Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)

I was nine or ten years old when I first read about the Holocaust. I vividly remember what a profound impact it had on me at the time. I learned of unthinkable acts committed by people against other people and it shattered the rather innocent view I had of human nature up until that point. I recall going into a very dark state of mind, something akin to what the novelist Martin Amis later termed “species shame”, that feeling of alienation and disgust that comes with an awareness of what people like ourselves are capable of. I comforted myself with the notion that the Holocaust must have been an aberration so horrific it was in its scale of cruelty and destruction.

Yet, of course, there have been many other genocides throughout history. In 2025, Gaza has been plunged into hell and we are all witnesses to extensive crimes against humanity committed by Israel over the past two years.

One of the most shameful aspects of what the Israeli state is committing in Gaza is what Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has identified as its abuse and manipulation of the memory of the Holocaust to tar critics of its genocidal actions as antisemitic and to adopt a position of victimhood based on the historical suffering of the Jewish people while at the same time committing offences against civilians as horrific as what the Nazis did during their infernal reign. The flotilla volunteers will go down in history as heroes at a time when those with the most power in Europe did little more than take refuge in the rhetoric of condemnation while cowering from meaningful action against an out-of-control genocidal regime.

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