In yet another controversial decision, the Goldsmiths College Students’ Union has rejected, by a margin of around 60 to 1, a motion to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day and all victims of genocide.
Education officer Sarah El-Alfy urged students to vote against the proposal, rejecting it as “Eurocentric” and “colonialist”.
One unnamed student added that, “The motion would force people to remember things they may not want to remember,” whilst another added argued that as the Union was “anti-Zionist” she couldn’t commemorate the Holocaust.
This follows news that the NUS voted against a motion condemning ISIS and supporting the Kurdish resistance as to do so would be Islamophobic.
The Tab reports that Goldsmiths Student Union President Howard Littler responded by saying, “Someone brought up Israel-Palestine out of the blue but I made a point of information and said I didn’t want to conflate the two,” further commenting that the controversy was just a “storm in a teacup.”
The motion called on the Union to recognise the “unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, of the other genocides, of totalitarianism and racial hatred,” adding that, “commemorating the victims of genocide, racial hatred and totalitarianism, and promoting public awareness of these crimes against humanity, is essential to sustaining and defending democratic culture and civil society, especially in the face of a resurgence of neo-fascism, racial hatred and neo-Stalinism across Europe.”
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