On August 8, 1942, Gerhart Riegner, who then worked in Geneva as the secretary of the World Jewish Congress, sent a telegram to contacts in the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office informing them in some detail about the systematic murder of European Jewry. Walter Laqueur explains how Riegner came to this information, why those in positions of power ignored it, and what the Western Allies might have done had they chosen to act on the information:

March 15 marks the beginning of this year’s Israel Apartheid Week, during which campus groups around the world hold rallies and events for the purpose of defaming the Jewish state and mustering support for the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction it (BDS). Richard Kemp comments: