The British government’s decision to embrace sweeping measures addressing antisemitism in schools is drawing a sharp contrast with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recently unveiled strategy, raising questions about why Britain’s plan appears more specific than the one proposed in America’s most Jewish city.
The U.K. government accepted all 27 recommendations from an independent review into antisemitism in schools and colleges in England. The measures include encouraging adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, specialized training for educators, strengthened reporting procedures and independent oversight.
Mamdani’s 33-page strategy — while not only focused on education — by comparison, does not adopt a single definition of antisemitism, explicitly address the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism or establish numerical benchmarks for measuring whether its initiatives succeed.
British Jewish author and Holocaust educator Dov Forman, who recently graduated from university, said Mamdani could learn from Britain’s targeted approach to addressing antisemitism in schools.
MAMDANI PLEDGES MILLIONS TO COMBAT ANTISEMITISM WHILE LEAVING KEY QUESTION UNRESOLVED
The British review followed a BBC report from Yavneh College, a Jewish secondary school near London, where students described how antisemitism has affected their daily lives. Their accounts offered a window into the urgency behind the government’s recommendations.
Education provides one of the clearest points of comparison between the two strategies. Mamdani's plan calls for expanding Holocaust education, including opportunities for students to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage, while also addressing how public schools respond to antisemitic discrimination. The U.K. government's recommendations address many of those same concerns, placing greater emphasis on how educators recognize antisemitism, how schools respond when incidents occur and what protections are in place for Jewish students.
The review, led by former senior education official Sir David Bell, found that nearly three in five Jewish people between the ages of 16 and 19 had experienced or witnessed antisemitism. It concluded that antisemitism is a distinct form of racism requiring a specific response and called for clearer guidance to distinguish legitimate political debate from harassment, intimidation and antisemitic rhetoric.
British Jewish author and Holocaust educator Dov Forman, who recently graduated from university, called the recommendations "the bare minimum," while acknowledging that the government is attempting to confront the problem directly.
"The least [Mamdani] could do is look at what has happened in the U.K. and adopt similar measures, such as adopting the IHRA definition, which is the agreed definition across the world and where there is a consensus of what antisemitism actually is," Forman told Fox News Digital.
"The basic way to solve antisemitism is to actually agree on what it is and to understand that targeting a Jew deliberately because of what is going on in Israel, for example, is antisemitic, as the IHRA definition says," he added.
Forman cautioned that the British recommendations remain largely optional and that their effectiveness will depend on whether institutions act.
"I do think some of them will be enforced and listened to. I do worry, though, that the government says things and does not actually take it seriously enough."
Education Secretary Lucy Powell said the government would establish an implementation group, while Bell was commissioned to conduct an independent assessment of its progress after one year.
Ambassador Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, welcomed Britain’s decision while emphasizing that adopting recommendations is only the beginning.
JEWISH EDUCATORS FACE RAMPANT ANTISEMITISM IN TEACHERS UNIONS, NEW REPORT FINDS
"I welcome the U.K.’s announcement that it has accepted all 27 recommendations," Kaploun wrote on X. "Now, the challenge lies in implementation and enforcement."
Forman also said that British officials must examine whether their rhetoric about Israel contradicts their stated commitment to protecting Jewish communities.
"It is very rich of the government to say that schools should adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism and that Jews should not be demonized for what is going on in the Middle East, and then for them to get up in the dispatch box in the House of Commons every week and blame Israel," he said.
"Stop talking and start acting," Forman added, calling on the government to confront Islamist extremism and the Muslim Brotherhood and identify more directly where antisemitism is originating.
The U.K. has faced criticism for being slow in combating antisemitism. Jewish residents have faced physical attacks, threats and harassment, making the specificity of its new plan and its contrast with New York City’s approach particularly notable.
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, senior rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, called Mamdani’s strategy a "paper tiger," arguing that its announced $36 million price tag obscures how little would go directly toward physical security.
"It’s a million dollars in security in a city with a million Jews. It’s a dollar a Jew," Steinmetz told Fox News Digital.
The strategy includes $1 million to support physical security for vulnerable nonprofit organizations, including synagogues and other houses of worship, and $6.4 million for grants through the city’s Partners Against the Hate initiative.
Steinmetz claimed that much of the money would support cultural centers and broadly defined community initiatives rather than immediate security needs.
SIGN UP FOR ANTISEMITISM EXPOSED NEWSLETTER
UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the American Jewish Committee’s New York office and the New York Board of Rabbis issued a joint statement warning that Mamdani’s plan fails to address a central source of contemporary antisemitism.
The organizations said rhetoric demonizing or delegitimizing Israel contributes to Jewish New Yorkers being treated as suspect, excluded or unsafe, and argued that any serious strategy must acknowledge that connection.
"How can you have a strategy to keep New York Jews safe when you can’t even name what the danger is?" Steinmetz asked.
One of Mamdani’s early actions as mayor was to revoke an executive order issued by former Mayor Eric Adams adopting the IHRA definition for city agencies. The definition provides examples of when criticism of Israel may cross into antisemitism while making clear that criticism comparable to that directed at any other country is not inherently antisemitic.
Fox News Digital asked Mamdani’s office why the city’s strategy omits the IHRA definition and measurable benchmarks, and whether the administration would consider safeguards similar to those adopted by Britain. The mayor’s office did not respond by the time of publication.
Britain’s measures have also only recently been accepted, and their impact remains untested.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Britain has defined the problem, outlined specific recommendations and established a process for reviewing its progress. New York City’s Jewish leaders are still asking whether City Hall has accurately identified the threat it claims it intends to confront.
Fox News Digital's Sydney Finver contributed to this report.
About 200 firefighters deployed to tackle blaze at former Nazi mountain retreat in remote part of southern Germany
Police have arrested a 33-year-old German citizen after a fire ripped through Adolf Hitler’s former mountain retreat in Bavaria, leaving the historic Nazi meeting place – known as the Eagle’s Nest – largely destroyed.
About 200 firefighters were deployed on Friday night to tackle the blaze at the Nazi dictator’s remote, purpose-built Kehlsteinhaus residence, a protected building on the peak of Obersalzberg in southern Germany.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Germany’s Bundestag has formally recognised the country’s particular historical responsibility towards Ukraine for atrocities committed during the Nazi occupation, adopting parliamentary resolutions commemorating the 85th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre near Kyiv.
The decision, taken on 9 October, has implications beyond historical remembrance. For decades, Germany’s responsibility for the destruction inflicted on the Soviet Union during the Second World War was frequently interpreted through its relationship with Russia. Moscow occupied a privileged position in German efforts at reconciliation, although some of the Nazi occupation’s worst atrocities took place in territories belonging to present-day Ukraine and Belarus.
The Bundestag’s parliamentary debate and resolutions reflect a different emphasis. Germany’s historical obligations are now being connected explicitly to Ukraine’s sovereignty and its defence against Russia’s invasion, challenging an interpretation of the past that had long influenced Berlin’s approach towards Moscow.
Following German reunification, reconciliation with Russia became a central element of Berlin’s eastern policy. The Soviet Union’s immense wartime losses, officially estimated at approximately 27 million people, were frequently invoked to explain Germany’s special obligation to maintain constructive relations with Moscow.
That historical argument became intertwined with political and economic considerations, contributing to the belief that Russia should remain closely integrated into Europe’s security and economic arrangements, even as relations with its neighbours deteriorated.
The difficulty lay in the frequent conflation of Russia with the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany invaded a multinational state, not the present-day Russian Federation. Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, Jews and numerous other peoples suffered under an occupation whose policies included mass murder, starvation, deportation and the systematic destruction of communities.
Ukraine was among the principal territories where the German war of annihilation unfolded. The Holocaust by bullets, the destruction of entire settlements, the exploitation of occupied agricultural regions and the deportation of civilians for forced labour were central features of Nazi rule there.
Nevertheless, German political discourse often approached this history primarily through the framework of German-Russian reconciliation. The suffering of Ukraine and Belarus was acknowledged, but neither country occupied a comparable position in Berlin’s strategic thinking.
This imbalance has been examined by German scholars of foreign policy, who have argued that the historical justification for rapprochement with Russia sometimes obscured the distinct wartime experiences of other former Soviet republics.
The anniversary of Babyn Yar provides a particularly direct illustration of the historical problem.
On 29 and 30 September 1941, German SS and police units, with assistance from local collaborators, murdered 33,771 Jewish men, women and children in a ravine outside Kyiv. The massacre was among the largest single mass shootings of the Holocaust.
Killings continued at the site throughout the German occupation. Approximately 100,000 people were murdered there, including Jews, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and other civilians persecuted by the Nazi authorities.
Babyn Yar was not an isolated atrocity. Similar mass executions occurred across occupied Ukraine, while millions of people suffered under German military occupation. The country’s experience formed a substantial part of the wider catastrophe conventionally remembered in Germany as the war against the Soviet Union.
The geographical distinction matters because the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991 did not transfer the historical experiences of its constituent peoples exclusively to Russia. Nor did Moscow’s position as the principal diplomatic successor to the USSR confer ownership of their wartime suffering.
Recognition of Ukraine’s separate experience therefore requires more than acknowledging the location of Nazi crimes. It involves reconsidering the political assumptions that allowed Russia to become Germany’s principal partner in commemorating a history shared by several nations.
In its resolution on the Babyn Yar anniversary, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU and its Social Democratic coalition partner explicitly connected remembrance of Nazi crimes with Germany’s present obligations towards Ukraine.
The document declares that responsibility for German atrocities does not end with commemorating their victims. It requires opposition to antisemitism, racism, historical revisionism and imperialist violence.
The parliamentary motion calls for continued political, economic, financial, humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine, together with support for its European integration and efforts to secure the return of children transferred to Russia.
The opposition Greens separately submitted a resolution centred on Germany’s historical responsibility towards Ukraine, advocating greater attention to the German occupation in historical education, research and cooperation between memorial institutions.
The development does not mean that Germany has only now recognised Ukrainian victims of Nazi persecution. German officials have previously acknowledged responsibility towards Ukraine alongside Russia and Belarus. In 2016, then foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier explicitly referred to the suffering of all three countries in an address marking the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
What has changed is the political weight attached to that recognition. The historical relationship with Moscow can no longer be treated as the principal expression of Germany’s obligations arising from the war, particularly when Russia is conducting a war of territorial conquest against another country devastated by Nazi aggression.
The reassessment also exposes a contradiction in Germany’s earlier Russia policy.
Historical responsibility was among the arguments used to defend engagement with Moscow, including economic cooperation and efforts to accommodate Russian security concerns. Such reasoning remained influential even after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The Nord Stream pipeline projects exemplified the wider policy of maintaining substantial economic ties with Russia despite objections from Ukraine and several Central and Eastern European governments. Those projects had commercial and geopolitical motivations, but they developed within a political culture in which reconciliation with Moscow carried particular historical significance.
Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 fundamentally undermined that approach. Germany subsequently expanded military assistance to Ukraine, while President Steinmeier acknowledged serious errors in his previous assessment of relations with Moscow.
The Bundestag’s latest resolution adds a historical dimension to that policy correction. Rather than regarding restraint towards Russia as the principal lesson of Germany’s wartime conduct, parliament has articulated a responsibility to assist Ukraine in preserving its independence.
The two positions are not necessarily incompatible as matters of historical remembrance. Germany retains an obligation to commemorate Russian victims of Nazism, just as it does Ukrainian, Belarusian and other victims. The distinction concerns whether responsibility for past atrocities should influence contemporary policy towards the Russian state when that state itself is violating another nation’s sovereignty.
That question has become increasingly important as German political parties debate the duration and extent of military assistance to Kyiv. Calls for renewed accommodation with Moscow continue to feature in domestic politics, including among those opposed to further weapons deliveries.
The Bundestag’s recognition of Ukraine’s particular historical experience does not resolve those disputes or establish a new military commitment. It does, however, challenge one of the historical arguments that shaped Germany’s previous relationship with Russia.
The significance of the Babyn Yar anniversary therefore extends beyond the commemoration of crimes committed in 1941. It concerns a belated adjustment in Germany’s understanding of where its wartime responsibilities lie, and the extent to which those responsibilities should inform its conduct towards Ukraine today.
Zack Polanski has repeatedly said that his family "fled the Nazis", but it's now emerged that all four of his grandparents were born in Britain, long before the war.
The post Zack Polanski Said his Family “Fled the Nazis”. But All Four of His Grandparents Were Born in Britain – Long Before the War appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Login