The Electronic Intifada 5 September 2025
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is emptying the Holocaust of meaning for students and not applying its lessons to Gaza.
Abaca Press“Unless we all actively try to understand the horrors of the past, why they happened and apply that understanding to today, we risk not spotting signs of hatred and the seeds of further atrocities.” So says the UK Department for Education’s website promoting reasons for why UK students learn about the Holocaust.
Consequently, as the school year restarts, let’s take a moment to spare a thought for all those history teachers and students out there, particularly as they navigate the subject of fascism, genocide and the Holocaust over the forthcoming months.
Since 1991, the Holocaust has been the only historical event that is compulsory to study in English schools following the national curriculum. However, in a speech to the Holocaust Educational Trust in September 2024, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared that “even schools who do not currently have to follow the national curriculum will have to teach the Holocaust when the new curriculum comes in.”
The “new curriculum” review that Starmer was referring to is expected to issue its final report within a number of weeks.
The move was lauded in 2021 by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, welcoming the plan to “teach younger people about the horrors of the past so that they may never be repeated.”
In his September 2024 speech, Starmer passionately outlined his vision.
“The Holocaust will become a critical, vital part of every single student’s identity,” he declared. “And not just studying it, learning from it too and above all, acting on its lessons.”
Learning what?
However, based on events in Gaza over the past 22 months and the response of Starmer and his acolytes, claims that the Holocaust is taught so that students can learn from the horrors of the latter is a dubious assertion to say the least.
After all, it is not that difficult to “spot signs of hatred” or identify “the seeds of further atrocities” as we witness atrocity after atrocity being perpetrated by Israel, livestreamed every single day for almost two years, supported, funded and armed by governments across the West.
Since 7 October 2023 alone, we have witnessed the slaughter of over 64,000 Palestinians in Gaza, approximately half of these being women and children, and at least another 11,000 missing. Some medical researchers say the death count could be much higher.
Meanwhile, in the same time period, approximately 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and more than 9,500 injured. Since January, some 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the northern West Bank as Israel drives more and more Palestinians from their land.
In Gaza, we have witnessed medical staff, humanitarian aid workers and journalists targeted and murdered, not only in their place of work, but many killed in their homes along with their families.
More than 90 percent of residential buildings in Gaza have been leveled or damaged. Over 98.5 percent of cropland is either destroyed or inaccessible or both, as the entire Strip is rendered uninhabitable by the Israeli regime.
Hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, churches, shops and offices have been damaged and blown up.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers have shamelessly filmed their war crimes, uploading them onto the internet as they laugh, celebrate death and destruction, and take pride in their bestiality.
The Israeli regime has used starvation as a weapon of war and ruthlessly killed and wounded many of those seeking food. Now they shamelessly talk of taking over the entirety of Gaza and concentrating Palestinians into a “humanitarian city,” as well as referring to “voluntary emigration.”
Indeed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and colleagues such as former defense minister Yoav Gallant, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, as well as numerous members of the Knesset and former and current military officials, have openly spoken of their intention to carry out war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Meanwhile, much of the Israeli mainstream media brazenly amplifies calls for genocide, while a Haaretz poll shows 82 percent of Israeli Jews support the forced expulsion of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, and 47 percent agree that in occupying an enemy city, the Israeli army should kill all its inhabitants. The poll reveals the unhinged, genocidal frenzy that permeates Israeli society, from top to bottom.
And as the reports, the images and the video footage have shown, the Zionist regime has been true to its word.
The regime promised ethnic cleansing and genocide. And it has delivered.
Bearing in mind the Israeli government’s propensity to break any agreement it signs up to – demonstrated most recently in March with the breaking of the ceasefire – this promise to annihilate Gaza and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people is one of those rare times it has been determined to keep its word on anything.
Yet despite the fact that the Israeli regime has relentlessly telegraphed its clear intent to commit a genocide and has taken actions consistent with these declarations of intent, Keir Starmer refuses to say that a genocide is actually taking place.
But then, lest we forget, following 7 October 2023, Starmer himself immediately claimed that Israel had a “right to defend herself,” even if that meant committing war crimes such as cutting off water and power.
Moreover, his government has continued to supply Israel with components for the very F-35 jets that have delivered death and destruction indiscriminately across Gaza, and even more shamefully, the Royal Air Force has been providing thousands of hours of surveillance intelligence for the Israeli regime and continues to do so.
So please, never again should we hear the mantra “Never again” from the lips of Starmer and other Western leaders. For what has long been held to be universally abhorrent has now been shown to be selectively palatable.
International humanitarian law is now an à la carte option, dependent on the color of one’s skin and on the religion one practices. And people around the world see through the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of the war criminals lecturing the rest of the world about the “rules-based order.”
As for the mandatory teaching of the Holocaust, we know why Starmer, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and other Zionist organizations really want it taught in schools.
It has nothing to do with ensuring students “spot signs of hatred.”
It has nothing to do with enabling young people to identify “the seeds of further atrocities.”
And it certainly has nothing to do with saying “Never again” to genocide.
The answer is provided in a description offered by Israeli playwright Yehoshua Sobol when writing about former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin following the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982.
Condemning Begin for “turning the Holocaust into an oversized symbol,” Sobol accused the prime minister of “using it like a dishcloth with which to wipe one’s dirty hands clean.”
And it is a similar cynicism that provides the rationale for compulsory Holocaust studies in schools today. It is a means by which the Israeli genocide can be justified, the Zionist settler-colony can be excused for its bloodletting, and anybody criticizing the slaughter can be portrayed as anti-Semitic.
In his speech to the Holocaust Educational Trust, Starmer revealed as much when he took clear aim at the millions who have attended pro-Palestine marches across the UK.
“We say never again. And yet in the last year, we’ve seen record levels of anti-Semitism,” Starmer claimed.
“Right here in Britain. Hatred marching on our streets.”
So, there you have it. In a speech asserting the importance for the British public to learn the lessons of a genocide 80 years ago, the UK prime minister denigrates and slanders those who actually do know their history and are acting to prevent a genocide today, accusing them of being anti-Semites in the process.
In light of the above, and along with Starmer’s use of anti-terror laws against those protesting the Palestinian holocaust, it would appear that teaching or learning the real lessons of the Holocaust might not be such a good idea anyway.
You just might end up in jail.
Roddy Keenan, originally from Ireland, is a freelance journalist and author based in the UK. He is a former teacher of history and politics.
