There is no question that the Trump administration’s “Statement On International Holocaust Remembrance Day” was a disappointment. Rather than mention Jews explicitly as victims of the Nazi killing machine, it spoke of “the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror” and of remembering “those who died.”
All lives count and we mean no denigration of the millions of non-Jews murdered by the Nazis, but the Holocaust is universally understood to refer specifically to Nazi Germany’s single-minded determination to kill every Jewish man, woman, and child to fall under its control.
Interestingly, in at least some of their Holocaust Remembrance statements, both President Obama (who in his last such statement spoke of “standing in solidarity with the Jewish community” and of “institutions that have been attacked because of their Jewish affiliation”) and President George W. Bush (who spoke of the “Nazis’ intended victims” and of “anti-Semitism”) seemed to dance around specifying the centrality to the Holocaust of the targeting of the Jews.
Yes, the Trump administration is literally in its infancy and the Holocaust statement may well reflect nothing more than an incomplete vetting process. But it is nonetheless worthy of note.
Having said that, we count ourselves among those fully expecting great things from President Trump’s emerging foreign policy. We are anticipating a departure from the Obama years, with a robust acknowledgement of the value of Israel as a close ally of the United States. We also believe the Trump administration likely will view Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimacy rather than Israeli settlement building as the core reason for the failure of peace negotiations.
So while the blip regarding the Holocaust Remembrance statement bears comment, there’s no apparent reason to get carried away worrying about its significance.