Exclusive: The four 'controversial' words banned at Ireland's Holocaust event

Further to our post on December 15th about the Master of Ceremonies (MC) for the Holocaust Educational Trust Ireland’s (HETI) Holocaust Commemoration event being forbidden to say the word ‘Israel’ or the phrase ‘the Jewish State’, we now have the closing part of 2014 MC Yanky Fachler’s draft speech which evidently so upset HETI trustees.
It seems that (according to our sources) objections were raised over Fachler saying “And we owe it to the victims, to the survivors, and to ourselves, to prevent the memory of the Holocaust being cynically distorted and hijacked by a vicious campaign that denies the Jewish people and the Jewish state – our past and our future.”
Fachler gave in and omitted the phrase “and the Jewish State” because he did not want to cause trouble. Hence the letter – signed by HETI Chair Peter Cassells – dated October 7th to Fachler, saying that in future, MCs would not be allowed to mention ‘Israel’ or ‘the Jewish State’.

heti
HETI Chair, Peter Cassells

Here is Fachler’s draft for the closing remarks of the 2014 Holocaust Commemoration event, along with banned four words:

The Holocaust showed us how science that can heal – was used to kill.
The Holocaust showed us how education that can enlighten – was used to rationalise away basic moral impulses.
The Holocaust showed us how the bureaucracy that sustains modern life – was used as the machinery of mass death.
The Holocaust showed us how easily civilised society can slip into deliberate, cynical and brutal genocide.
As our annual Day of Remembrance draws to a close, every one of us here today – Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Humanist, believer, non-believer – from whatever ethnic, cultural and political persuasion – must make a pledge to truly eradicate intolerance from our midst.
We must drown out the vile voices that seek to deny that the human catastrophe we call the Shoah ever happened.
We must denounce the corrosive rise in racist and antisemitic rhetoric by a malign minority of politicians.
And we owe it to the victims, to the survivors, and to ourselves, to prevent the memory of the Holocaust being cynically distorted and hijacked by a vicious campaign that denies the Jewish people and the Jewish state – our past and our future.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us in this evening of solemn commemoration.

HETI’s efforts to break the link between the commemoration of the greatest crime against the Jewish people and the Jewish state are truly shameful, and we again call on the trustees responsible to resign.
As the UK Board of Deputies commented:

“Israel was the aspiration of so many of the victims of the Holocaust and provided refuge for survivors.  Had it existed earlier it could have been the refuge of so many more.”

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