Today we mark the eightieth anniversary of history’s most horrific, horrifying crime. It is of course vitally important that we continue to commemorate it, lest we risk it happening again, although I’m not sure there’s that much I can say about it. However, I will say this: I’m sure that I’m not alone in feeling deeply unsettled by the fact that this commemoration comes during a time when the leaders of the homeland set up for the jewish people in the aftermath of the holocaust, seem to be acting towards the Palestinians with exactly the same venomous bigotry which the Nazis once showed to them. That now includes strongly backing Trump’s plan to forcibly resettle tens of thousands of people living in Gaza into other neighbouring Middle-Eastern states – if that isn’t ethnic cleansing, I don’t know what is.

Nor can I be the only person to feel great unease at the fact that this is also a time when the United States, one of the Allied Nations which fought so stridently to end the tyranny of fascism, is itself swiftly gliding towards that very darkness. As we watch the commemoration events on our televisions today then, it is very difficult not to reflect that, if we are truly serious about not repeating the depravities of eighty years ago, we must be ever more conscious of what is happening at the moment.