This month, 80 years ago, the Nuremberg trials began. What were they and why are they important as a starting point for the current article? In brief, the trials were a series of international military tribunals formed for the express purpose of prosecuting the top Nazi German politicians, military commanders and economic leaders for the crimes they committed in pursuit of aggressive predatory warfare.

The victorious allies – the US, Britain, France and the USSR – agreed to form a tribunal, assembling irrefutable evidence of Nazi atrocities, such as the extermination of European Jews, exploiting forced labour in concentration camps, and systematic violence directed at civilian populations. Indictments were filed against the main Nazi defendants in October 1945, and trial itself commenced in November.

The network of concentration camps established by the Nazi hierarchy was extensively documented, and its inner workings were elaborated in full detail. The horrific nature of these camps constituted a powerful indictment of Nazi atrocities.

Let us now examine an irony of history.

In 1945, British soldiers, among others, helped to liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp complex in northern Germany. Originally a prisoner of war camp, it was expanded during the war to accommodate civilian prisoners. The full horrors of the place, the use of forced labour, mass starvation of prisoners, the sadistic beatings of inmates by SS guards, were publicised to highlight the crimes of the Nazis.

Only a few years after that, the British military and colonial authorities in Kenya, established a nation-wide network of internment camps, where Kenyans were held without trial, subjected to inhumane torture, and used as forced labour.

The British military was waging an anticolonial counterinsurgency against the Kikuyu nation, and its military wing, the Mau Mau. The English took civilians as hostages, a practice that had been condemned as a crime against humanity at the Nuremberg trials.

In our own times, the genocidal violence inflicted by the Israeli military on the Palestinians, and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, constitute grievous crimes against humanity. Millions were killed and displaced, and many more Iraqis and Palestinians are still suffering. The perpetrators of these crimes, the politicians whose decisions led to these criminal actions, remain free and unaccountable.

Multiple human rights and nongovernmental organisations are explicitly stating that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. I am not making this up; no, I am not motivated by a homicidal antisemitism. Numerous scholarly and mainstream organisations, such as Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, (Medicins sans Frontieres) are all collecting evidence that the Israeli government, and its military forces, are guilty of genocide in Palestine.

Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies and former Israeli military officer, arrives at the inescapable conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. His article ‘I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It’ is worth reading in its entirety.

We should always be cautious when applying serious terms, like the word genocide, to a given situation. There is no disputing the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust. The immediate results of the 1945-46 Nuremberg trials were to establish a framework of international laws and rules by which all states (and nonstate forces for that matter) must comply when dealing with each other, and their respective populations.

We must continue to teach the lessons of the Holocaust, so that future generations never forget. The phrase Never Again is certainly one way of sensitising ourselves against those who would repeat the crimes of the past.

The Nuremberg trials, and the subsequent Nuremberg proceedings, established a precedent where individual military officers, politicians, and businesspeople could be held to account for crimes against humanity.

The subsequent Nuremberg trials, held by the International Military Tribunal, prosecuted second-level Nazis, and those in the wider business community who assisted and actively participated in the commission of crimes against humanity. For instance, one of those trials – out of a series of twelve – charged German doctors and administrators with conducting inhumane medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, without their consent.

One of the main defendants at the original Nuremberg trials with Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892 – 1946), an Austrian-born Nazi and Reichskommisar (Reich commissioner) of German-occupied Netherlands. He was basically the governor of the Netherlands for Germany. When the Dutch resisted his rule, he cut off the supply of food and coal (the latter used for fuel) as collective punishment.

The 1944-45 winter is known as the Hunger Winter. Intentionally starving large portions of the Netherlands, thousands died of malnutrition and freezing. The effects of this human-made famine are still examined by medical professionals and historians today. Dutch authorities commemorate – if that is the right word – that particularly painful chapter in their nation’s history out of respect to the victims.

Seyss-Inquart was convicted of crimes against humanity, sentenced to death and hanged in 1946.

The BBC, hardly a bastion of leftist propaganda, published an article in August this year detailing how Israel’s actions have resulted in a human-induced famine in Gaza. Citing spiralling rates of child malnutrition and poverty, the situation for the Palestinians is dire. Who are the Israeli politicians and military commanders responsible for this crime? Who are the Israeli equivalents of Seyss-Inquart?

Let us perform a revealing comparison when it comes to the treatment of genocide. This examination owes its origin to Caitlin Johnstone, a political writer. There is no shortage of condemnations of the genocidal atrocities committed by the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The massacres carried out by this murderous militia are plain for all the world to see.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a major funder and military ally of the RSF. The UAE receives extensive financial and military backing from the United States. Numerous American politicians have been able to draw the dots – the US is complicit in the genocidal actions of the Darfur-based paramilitary group.

No-one has lost their job because they denounced the RSF. No-one been canceled or silenced for speaking out about the genocidal RSF. No-one has faced an army of online trolls, hysterically accusing the anti-genocide voices of being hateful, or propaganda tools of a foreign power, or apologists for racial hatred.

Yet pro-Palestine advocates face precisely that kind of sustained, organised political pressure. And there are academics who have lost their jobs for speaking up about Palestine.

The state that claims to be the inheritor of the victims of the Holocaust has been misusing and repurposing the memory of the dead to insulate itself from any and all criticism. If the phrase Never Again is to have any meaning and relevance today, it must be applicable to all victims of genocide, including the Palestinians.