International Holocaust Memorial Day is a UN designated day that occurred on January 27th each year. Commemorations occur around the world and are accompanied by media content about the Holocaust, testimony from survivors, and other remembrance activities.
Every year we see efforts on Holocaust Memorial Day by the far-right to counter Holocaust remembrance with Holocaust denial and distortion. We also see efforts by some Palestinian activists to engage in Holocaust minimization, Holocaust inversion, and efforts to hijack social media threads about Holocaust remembrance and education to promote Palestinian advocacy.
In the current climate after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel, and the subsequent war and its impact on civilians in both Gaza and Israel, this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is likely to see a tsunami of Holocaust denial, distortion, inversion, and efforts to hijack content including with disinformation about the conflict and general antisemitic content. This is likely to occur in all countries and across all languages forming a Tsunami of hate and harm to the Jewish community, and to Holocaust survivors in particular.
The “HMD 2024 Tsunami Response” is an international response to monitor this impact and gather the evidence base to inform responses at all levels of society. The data gathered will:
- Provide data about Holocaust denial and distortion, as well as antisemitism.
- Inform teachers and educational authorities of content / narratives they may face in classrooms when teaching about the Holocaust in 2024.
- Highlight content online moderators at media organisations need to be ready to address.
- Provide governments data on the sort of pro-Palestinian advocacy makes use of antisemitism.
On the last point, not all pro-Palestinian advocacy or criticism of Israel is antisemitic, but since October 7 there has been an increase in efforts to give cover to and protect the use of antisemitism when it is used in pro-Palestinian advocacy. We are seeing an undermining of concerns of antisemitism, and harassment and attacks on those who stand up against antisemitism. These issues need to be put under the spotlight.
We invite organisations involved in Holocaust remembrance and education, Jewish community organisations, and organisations that tackle hate speech and racism to join us as partners in this project. As time is short, all partnership requests must be received through the online form before Tuesday January 23rd (in your local time).
What participants need to do
All partnerships must be properly authorised by the partner organisation under their own procedures (i.e. ensure you have authority to add your organisation as a partner before completing the form). There is no direct financial commitment.
The following in-kind commitment is required:
- Complete the short form below so we have your details and logo
Partners are also (if they can) encourage to:
- Provide at least one participant (volunteer or staff member) to assist in this project – the expected time commitment is a minimum of 2 hours of work in total (see details below).
- Coordination participation by the partner’s affiliated organisations
- Suggest one or more experts to collaborate in writing the report
- Nominate one or more people to review a draft of the report and provide a brief statement of support
What participants will need to do
Participants will need to be able to communicate with us in English, but would otherwise work in their own language(s). Participants are expected to contribute a minimum of 2 hours in total.
All participants should register by completing this form.
Participants may assist in one or more of the following tasks:
| What | When | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Help to get organisations and volunteers on board | Now until January 23rd | Share this page |
| Submit details of online media articles (from the mainstream media) published about the Holocaust / Holocaust Memorial Day between 26th and 30th of January 2024 | January 26th – 30th | Use this form (A Google account is needed) |
| Review a set of comments, made in social media, on posts about these articles. The comments will be provided to you in a file, you do not need to use social media to do this. | February 5th – 11th | You will be allocated a file of comments like this one. You will be asked to read the comments in the file, and copy any that are problematic into a Google form, indicating why they are being added e.g. “Holocaust denial”, “Holocaust distortion”, “Antisemitism”, etc. |
| Help diseminate the results of this work (reports, social media posts etc) | March | A report will be published and some content for social media created. You can help share this content. |
More about reviewing
In the review stage participants will be given access to a set of comments made in response to social media posts that shared the news articles previously identified. The comments will be provided to you in a spreadsheet or document, you do not need to collect them from social media sites yourself. Each comment should be read, and then only those that are problematic should be logged through our online form. You will need to categorise the problematic comments as one or more of: antisemitic, Holocaust denial, Holocaust distortion, or otherwise inappropriate.
Outcomes
A report will be produced, with all the partners listed, that details the global results of this work. It will present empirical results of the nature of the problematic comments seen both globally and by country. It will list common narratives of disinformation, deconstruct them to highlight disinformation and hate speech, and provide a response to them.
Sponsors
We invite both partners and other organisations, foundations, government departments / agencies, and companies to become sponsors of the project. Each sponsor will contribute US$10,000 to the project.
- Sponsors may (if they wish) have their logo included on the cover of the report.
- Sponsors may (if they wish) receive an anonymised copy of the collected data for their own internal use, and may use a small number of examples publicly to support media engagement, educational programs, or policy discussion.
Sponsorship funds will contribute to the costs of gathering and processing the data, disseminate the report, and supporting efforts making use of the data both globally and locally with the partners.