Holocaust

Holocaust Museum LA says the post was misinterpreted as a ‘political statement’ and promises to ‘do better’.

A Holocaust museum in Los Angeles is facing backlash after deleting an Instagram post that suggested the phrase “never again” should apply to all people – not just Jews.

The post, shared with Holocaust Museum LA’s 24,200 Instagram followers, read: “Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews.” The slogan “never again”, long associated with Holocaust remembrance, is also invoked more broadly as a pledge to prevent future genocides.

The Instagram message was initially praised online and interpreted by some as an acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering amid Israel’s war on Gaza, which numerous United Nations experts, scholars and rights groups have described as a genocide.

It was later deleted and replaced with a statement on Saturday saying the post had been misinterpreted.

“We recently posted an item on social media that was part of a pre-planned campaign intended to promote inclusivity and community that was easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East. That was not our intent,” it said.

Holocaust Museum LA also promised to “do better” and to “ensure that posts in the future are more thoughtfully designed and thoroughly vetted”.

The museum, which is currently closed for construction until June 2026, quickly faced criticism online after journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News reposted a screenshot of the deleted message, writing: “Speechless. No words for this.”

Yasmine Taeb, a human rights lawyer and progressive strategist, called the museum’s move “absolutely disgusting”, saying that the museum is “cowering under pressure” from pro-Israel voices.

“Countless genocide scholars and human rights organisations have confirmed what Israel is doing in Gaza is textbook definition of genocide,” Taeb told Al Jazeera.

“It’s appalling that a museum established for the purpose of educating the public about genocide and the Holocaust not only refuses to acknowledge the reality of Israel’s actions in Gaza, but [is] removing a social media post that merely stated that ‘never again’ is not intended for just Jews, in order for it to not be interpreted as a response to the genocide in Gaza.”

The original now-deleted post did not mention Gaza, but it faced a barrage of pro-Israel comments expressing disapproval, including some that called on donors to stop funding the institution.

By deleting the post and issuing the subsequent statement, the museum sparked accusations of backtracking on a universal anti-genocide principle.

“We live in a world where the Holocaust Museum has to aploogise and retract for simply appearing to sympathise with Palestinians,” Palestinian American activist and comedian Amer Zahr told Al Jazeera.

“If that does not illustrate the historic dehumanisation that Arab Americans have had to live with, I don’t know what does.”

Assal Rad, a researcher with the Arab Center Washington DC, called the controversy “unbelievable”.

“Palestinians are so dehumanized that they’re excluded from ‘never again,’ apparently their genocide is the exception,” Rad wrote on X.

Political commentator Hasan Piker also slammed the museum’s decision. “A real shame that even a tepid general anti-genocide statement was met with unimaginable resistance from Israel supporters,” he wrote in a social media post.

The Holocaust Museum LA did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has compared newly released images of two captives in Gaza to Nazi starvation of Jews in the Holocaust. But Netanyahu is himself accused of committing war crimes by starving Gaza’s population. Warning: This video contains distressing images.

NEW YORK — For years, Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar at Columbia University, has used Hannah Arendt’s book about the trial of a Nazi war criminal, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” to spark discussion among her students about the Holocaust and its lingering traumas.

But after Columbia’s recent adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, which casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech, Hirsch fears she may face official sanction for even mentioning the landmark text by Arendt, a philosopher who criticized Israel’s founding.

For the first time since she started teaching five decades ago, Hirsch, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, is now thinking of leaving the classroom altogether.

“A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic and threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry,” she told the Associated Press. “I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.”

Hirsch is not alone. At universities across the country, academics have raised alarm about growing efforts to define antisemitism on terms pushed by the Trump administration, often under the threat of federal funding cuts.

Promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the definition lists 11 examples of antisemitic conduct, including applying “double standards” to Israel, comparing the country’s policies to Nazism or describing its existence as “a racist endeavor.”

Ahead of a $220-million settlement with the Trump administration announced Wednesday, Columbia agreed to incorporate the IHRA definition and its examples into its disciplinary process. It has been endorsed in some form by Harvard, Yale and dozens of other universities.

While supporters say the semantic shift is necessary to combat evolving forms of Jewish hate, civil liberties groups warn it will further suppress pro-Palestinian speech already under attack by President Trump and his administration.

For Hirsch, the restrictions on drawing comparisons to the Holocaust and questioning Israel’s founding amount to “clear censorship,” which she fears will chill discussions in the classroom and open her and other faculty up to spurious lawsuits.

“We learn by making analogies,” Hirsch said. “Now the university is saying that’s off limits. How can you have a university course where ideas are not up for discussion or interpretation?”

A spokesperson for Columbia didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

‘Weaponization’ of an educational framework

When he first drafted the IHRA definition of antisemitism two decades ago, Kenneth Stern said he “never imagined it would one day serve as a hate speech code.”

At the time, Stern was working as the lead antisemitism expert at the American Jewish Committee. The definition and its examples were meant to serve as a broad framework to help European countries track bias against Jews, he said.

In recent years, Stern has spoken forcefully against what he sees as its “weaponization” against pro-Palestinian activists, including anti-Zionist Jews.

“People who believe they’re combating hate are seduced by simple solutions to complicated issues,” he said. “But when used in this context, it’s really actually harming our ability to think about antisemitism.”

Stern said he delivered that warning to Columbia’s leaders last fall after being invited to address them by Claire Shipman, then a co-chair of the board of trustees and the university’s current interim president.

The conversation seemed productive, Stern said. But in March, shortly after the Trump administration said it would withhold $400 million in federal funding to Columbia over concerns about antisemitism, the university announced it would adopt the IHRA definition for “training and educational” purposes.

Then this month, days before announcing a deal with the Trump administration to restore that funding, Shipman said the university would extend the IHRA definition for disciplinary purposes, deploying its examples when assessing “discriminatory intent.”

“The formal incorporation of this definition will strengthen our response to and our community’s understanding of modern antisemitism,” Shipman wrote.

Stern, who now serves as director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, called the move “appalling,” predicting it would spur a new wave of litigation against the university while further curtailing pro-Palestinian speech.

Already, the university’s disciplinary body has faced backlash for investigating students who criticized Israel in op-eds and other venues, often at the behest of pro-Israel groups.

“With this new edict on IHRA, you’re going to have more outside groups looking at what professors are teaching, what’s in the syllabus, filing complaints and applying public pressure to get people fired,” he said. “That will undoubtedly harm the university.”

Calls to ‘self-terminate’

Beyond adopting the IHRA definition, Columbia has also agreed to place its Middle East studies department under new supervision, overhaul its rules for protests and coordinate antisemitism training with groups such as the Anti-Defamation League.

Last week, the university suspended or expelled nearly 80 students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Kenneth Marcus, chair of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said Columbia’s actions were an overdue step to protect Jewish students from harassment.

He dismissed faculty concerns about the IHRA definition, which he said would “provide clarity, transparency and standardization” to the university’s effort to root out antisemitism.

“There are undoubtedly some Columbia professors who will feel they cannot continue teaching under the new regime,” Marcus said. “To the extent that they self-terminate, it may be sad for them personally, but it may not be so bad for the students at Columbia University.”

But Hirsch, the Columbia professor, said she was committed to continuing her long-standing study of genocides and their aftermath.

Part of that work, she said, will involve talking to students about Israel’s “ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide” in the Gaza Strip, where nearly 60,000 Palestinians have died in 21 months of war — most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry — and where experts are warning of rising famine.

“With this capitulation to Trump, it may now be impossible to do that inside Columbia,” Hirsch said. “If that’s the case, I’ll continue my work outside the university’s gates.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

In May 1939, a ship called the St. Louis departed from Hamburg, Germany, with 937 passengers, most of them Jews fleeing the Holocaust. They had been promised disembarkation rights in Cuba, but when the ship reached Havana, the government refused to let it dock. The passengers made desperate pleas to the U.S., including directly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to allow them entry. Roosevelt never responded. The State Department wired back that they should “wait their turn” and enter legally.

As if that were a realistic option available to them.

After lingering off the coast of Florida hoping for a merciful decision from Washington, the St. Louis and its passengers returned to Europe, where the Nazis were on the march. Ultimately, 254 of the ship’s passengers died in the Holocaust.

In response to this shameful failure to provide protection, the nations of the world came together and drafted an international treaty to protect those fleeing persecution. The treaty, the 1951 Refugee Convention, and its 1967 Protocol, has been ratified by more than 75% of nations, including the United States.

Because the tragedy of the St. Louis was fresh in the minds of the treaty drafters, they included an unequivocal prohibition on returning fleeing refugees to countries where their “life or freedom would be threatened.” This is understood to prohibit sending them to a country where they would face these threats, as well as sending them to a country that would then send them on to a third country where they would be at such risk.

All countries that are parties to the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees are bound by this prohibition on return (commonly referred to by its French translation, “nonrefoulement”). In the U.S., Congress enacted the 1980 Refugee Act, expressly adopting the treaty language. The U.S. is also a party to the Convention Against Torture, which prohibits the return of individuals to places where they would be in danger of “being subjected to torture.”

In both Trump administrations, there have been multiple ways in which the president has attempted to eviscerate and undermine the protections guaranteed by treaty obligation and U.S. law. The most drastic among these measures have been the near-total closure of the border to asylum seekers and the suspension of entry of already approved and vetted refugees.

However, none of these measures has appeared so clearly designed to make a mockery of the post-World War II refugee protection framework as the administration’s proposals and attempts to send migrants from the U.S. to Libya and Rwanda.

Although there are situations in which the U.S. could lawfully send a migrant to a third country, it would still be bound by the obligation not to return the person to a place where their “life or freedom would be threatened.” The choices of Libya and Rwanda — rather than, for example, Canada or France — can only be read as an intentional and open flouting of that prohibition.

Libya is notorious for its abuse of migrants, with widespread infliction of torture, sexual violence, forced labor, starvation and slavery. Leading advocacy groups such as Amnesty International call it a “hellscape.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has stated in no uncertain terms that Libya is not to be considered a safe third country for migrants. The U.S. is clearly aware of conditions there; the State Department issued its highest warning level for Libya, advising against travel to Libya because of crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping and armed conflict.

Although conditions in Rwanda are not as extreme, the supreme courts of both Israel and the United Kingdom have ruled that agreements to send migrants to Rwanda are unlawful. The two countries had attempted to outsource their refugee obligations by calling Rwanda a “safe third country” to which asylum seekers could be sent to apply for protection.

Israel and the U.K.’s highest courts found that Rwanda — contrary to its stated commitment when entering these agreements — had in fact refused to consider the migrants’ asylum claims, and instead, routinely expelled them, resulting in their return to countries of persecution, in direct violation of the prohibition on refoulement. The U.K. court also cited Rwanda’s poor human rights record, including “extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture.”

If the Trump administration had even a minimal commitment to abide by its international and domestic legal obligations, plans to send migrants to Libya or Rwanda would be a nonstarter. But the plans are very much alive, and it is not far-fetched to assume that their intent is to further undermine internationally agreed upon norms of refugee protection dating to World War II. Why else choose the two countries that have repeatedly been singled out for violating the rights of refugees?

As in Israel and the U.K., there will be court challenges should the U.S. move forward with its proposed plan of sending migrants to Libya and Rwanda. It is hard to imagine a court that could rule that the U.S. would not be in breach of its legal obligation of nonrefoulement by delivering migrants to these two countries.

Having said that, and despite the clear language of the treaty and statute, it has become increasingly difficult to predict how the courts will rule when the Supreme Court has issued decisions overturning long-accepted precedent, and lower courts have arrived at diametrically opposed positions on some of the most contentious immigration issues.

In times like these, we should not depend solely on the courts. There are many of us here in the U.S. who believe that the world’s refugee framework — developed in response to the profound moral failure of turning back the St. Louis — is worth fighting for. We need to take a vocal stand. The clear message must be that those fleeing persecution should never be returned to persecution.

If we take such a stand, we will be in the good company of those who survived the Holocaust and continue to speak out for the rights of all refugees.

Karen Musalo is a law professor and the founding director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Law, San Francisco. She is also lead co-author of “Refugee Law and Policy: A Comparative and International Approach.”