Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Blair advisers urge that U.K.cancel Holocaust Day

From Haaretz - Israel News: 20:34 11/09/2005 By Haaretz Service

Advisers appointed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair are proposing that Britain get rid of Holocaust Memorial Day because Muslims find it offensive, the British Sunday Times reported.

The draft proposals - which provoked a backlash from British Jewish leaders - want to replace Holocaust Memorial Day with a Genocide Day that would include recognition of Muslim deaths in the West Bank and Gaza, Chechnya and Bosnia, the Times said.

A Home Office spokesman said it would consider the proposals but said it regarded the Holocaust as a 'defining tragedy in European history,' according to the report.

...'There are 500 Palestinian towns and villages that have been wiped out over the years,' Ibrahim Hewitt, chairman of the charity Interpal, told the Times. 'That's pretty genocidal to me.'

...Britain's Holocaust Memorial Day was first held in January 2001, and has been held on January 27 every year since then.

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