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Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said that the UK “is proud” to co-sponsor a United Nations (UN) resolution to combat Holocaust denial, that was adopted yesterday.
She announced on Twitter that it was “an historic UN resolution to combat Holocaust denial brought forward by our Israeli and German friends”. Foreign Secretary Truss added: “Together we continue to stand against Antisemitism in all forms and reject any attempt to deny the facts of the Holocaust”.
The resolution, put forward by Israel and Germany, was passed without a vote by the 193-member General Assembly. The move sends “a strong… message against the denial or the distortion of these historical facts”, the UN said. It is only the second time in UN history that an Israeli resolution has been adopted by the UN General Assembly.
Ambassador of Israel in the UK H.E. Tzipi Hotovely thanked Foreign Secretary Truss for the UK’s support. While the resolution was adopted, Iran – a member of the organisation – said it was disassociating itself from the text.
The resolution lists distortion or denial of the Holocaust as: intentional efforts to excuse or minimise the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany; gross minimisation of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources; attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide; statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event; and attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups.
