Holocaust Exhibit Is Barred From Parliament Hall That Hosted Palestine Booth

In this mindset, Jewish victimhood does not count

[The Editors is called The Editors, plural, not The Editor, singular, for a reason. When I launched it, a shrewd friend advised, “it can’t just be you.” I’m delighted to start including some additional voices. Today’s comes from Michael Mosbacher, who is associate comment editor at London’s Daily Telegraph. He is a past editor of Standpoint and The Critic, having co-founded both British magazines.—Ira Stoll.]

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign stall in Westminster Hall, July 2024. Photo: Mike Smith.

King Charles visited Auschwitz January 27 to participate in the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of its liberation. The occasion was significant both on a personal level — Charles was visibly moved and affected by what he saw — and a symbolic level. No serving British monarch had previously visited that murderous place.

Queen Elizabeth had avoided Auschwitz and also never set foot in Israel, though she did visit at least 117 countries — including many in the Middle East — during her 70-year reign. Views on why this was the case vary. Many think it reflected advice from the UK’s Foreign Office, seeking to curry favor in the Arab world. Others fear it might, sadly, have shone a light on Elizabeth’s own private sentiments.

So the king’s part in the commemorations last week was a welcome reaffirmation of the British state’s recognition of the horrors inflicted upon Jews, just for being Jewish.

But other decisions have been pointing in the opposite direction. The National Holocaust Centre and Museum was refused permission to display its touring exhibition “Vicious Circle” in the Houses of Parliament’s Westminster Hall on the grounds that the exhibit’s displays are too political. They were offered a much less prominent and more everyday location within Parliament instead.

The parliamentary authorities argued that Westminster Hall — what is left of the original medieval Palace of Westminster, it is where Elizabeth’s body lay in state in 2022 and mourners filed by — is a “politically neutral space and activity which could be perceived as campaigning/lobbying or trying to influence political opinions would not be permitted.”

This is despite the fact that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the co-organizers of London’s near weekly, hate-filled, anti-Israel marches, were allowed to set up a stall in the very same Westminster Hall location last summer. Magically, this did not fall foul of the rules.

What is it about “Vicious Circle” that the parliamentary authorities objected to?

The exhibition focuses on five pogroms – Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938, the Farhud in Baghdad in 1941, the Kielce pogrom in Poland in 1946, the anti-Jewish Aden riots in 1947 and Hamas’s 2023 October 7 massacre. And this is surely the crux of the issue.

If the exhibition had only been about the Holocaust it is most unlikely it would have been blocked. A bill — backed by both Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Conservative predecessors — is currently winding its way through the legislature to build a permanent, gargantuan, £150 million ($186 million) Holocaust memorial in a small park immediately adjacent to the Houses of Parliament. Some prominent Jewish voices are opposed to the plan, as they fear the sheer scale and prominence of the monument will make it a focus for anti-Israel protests.

So it is not the memorialization of the Holocaust per se which will have been objected to. Pointing out the continuities in anti-Jewish hate is surely what pushed “Vicious Circle” beyond the pale. The suffering of every other minority must be affirmed and endlessly atoned for, but that of Jews can be ignored, overlooked, even explained away.

The decision appears to have been taken at a fairly lowly level. Whilst it was done in the name of the Speakers of the House of Commons and Lords — in the UK these are not partisan positions; while those elected to them have previously been party politicians, on elevation they relinquish their past ties and are supposed to be politically neutral — it appears they were not consulted. They have made their displeasure known.

But in a way, this makes it even worse. It suggests that the knee-jerk reaction of mid-level bureaucracy is badly skewed on all things Jewish and Israel-related. The decision will not have been made after careful political calculations; it is not a dog whistle to appeal to Muslim voters; those making it will have thought they were avoiding contention rather than embroiling themselves in a row.

The whole affair shows that it is seemingly becoming the default position of officialdom, and indeed the circles who apply to work in it, that highlighting anti-Jewish violence is suspect. In this mindset, Israel is now the mighty aggressor, and Jewish victimhood does not count.

This decision is not isolated. Some Holocaust commemorations in the UK increasingly overlook how Jews were uniquely targeted for complete extermination and instead include them as one of myriad groups who suffered under the Nazis. It is not a new phenomenon — in the former East Germany anyone visiting the terror sites would leave with the impression that the Nazis’ main victim were the Communists, not the Jews — but the more Israel defends itself against murderous antisemitic onslaught, the worse it gets.

Eighty years on, “never again” is something that virtually all are willing to solemnly intone. But it doesn’t seem to apply to Jews.