-> COVER -> G21 MIDEAST
For the Jews born after the Second World War, the Holocaust is not a matter simply to be remembered. They weren't direct victims of the atrocities committed by the Third Reich, but descendants of a generation that was. For them, the Holocaust was something to be taught. It was a part of their upbringing as Jews.
Since then, for many Jews around the world --- and especially for Ashkenazi Jews --- the term "Judaism" has been socially redefined. A whole religion, and not just any religion (the oldest monotheist faith) had changed.
Unlike his or her antecedent, the modern day Jew knows that the Holocaust is an important factor of his or her identity.
The appropriation of the Holocaust as a major element or sometimes even as a symbol of the Jewish identity, rather than simply remaining a sad period that nevertheless should be remembered and a topic to think about, is dangerous.
It is the compliance of letting the history, the horrors, and the suffering of the Holocaust fill in a personal void created by apathy towards traditional Biblical Judaism. Each year, within Jewish communities in Israel, France, and especially the United States, the memory of the Holocaust not only survives, but also grows, through new museums, new movies, new books, new monetary reparations to the victims, and also new professorships on anti-Semitism and the genocide.
During this past decade, the memory of the atrocities of the Third Reich is more powerful than it has ever been and the Holocaust seems to be more contemporary than the Rwanda genocide that happened less than six years ago. This eternalizing of the Holocaust has legitimized a tendency to self-victimization, that is, to portray oneself as a victim. In La Shoah comme religion , Esther Benbassa, professor of Modern Jewish History at the Ecole pratique des hautes Ètudes, explains that, "in Western countries where anti-Semitism is, in reality, far from exhibiting any sort of danger for the everyday life of Jews, there is still a tendency to track down any suspicious word or phrase, or any cyber-frenzy. Never before have the victim's clothes been re-worn with such complacency as now. Can we open a Jewish newspaper without reading an article on anti-Semitism or on the Holocaust?"
This propaganda claiming victimization of the Jews could be morally and politically dangerous.
It automatically immunizes the Jews against any criticism, since this criticism, when put in a context where the Holocaust is always present and remembered, could be tracked and accused of being anti-Semitism.
What is worse is that this self-victimization also immunizes Israel, a state that openly proclaims and constantly commemorates its Jewish identity and post-Holocaust history, from any blame or criticism. This absence of political reproach with regard to Israel has given the Western World an image of a sin-free, infallible Jewish state.
For example, for a typical American, Israel is a state that has fought justly to constitute itself on a land that it used to own 2000 years ago, a democratic country in the middle of a hostile region, surrounded by a bunch of totalitarian Arab countries.
What the typical American does not know is that a multitude of truths have been auto-censored by Western journalists and academia, in general, due to the fear of being taxed with anti-Semitism.
Most Americans have never heard of the Deir Yassine massacre when the Irgoun, one of the terrorist branches of the Israeli army, killed 250 Palestinians; or how the Haganah, the official Israeli army, in various Palestinian villages like that of Haker, used to kill a few Palestinians and let their corpses hang from trees, thus sending to the rest of the villagers a message of what they should be expecting. The massacres and the hangings were part of a strategy to incite the local Arabs to flee and leave free ways for the foundation of the "Biblical" Jewish State. The reactions of the new Israeli population to these strategies were diverse.
In a France 3 television documentary aired in 1984, on the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, Israeli writer Aron Amir states,
"I remember well the day of Deir Yassine, since it is the most famous or, if you will, the most infamous case, and I must admit that at the time I believed that it was necessary because it has successfully brought about the flight of the [Palestinian] fighters, who, in reality, were stronger than the weak forces of Israeli clandestineness."
In the same TV documentary, kibbutzin Nissan Rilov describes how already in 1936, under the protection of the British army, he also helped in the expulsion of local Palestinians, "In one day, in order to start building [our homes] on this land, with bulldozers that existed then, primitive bulldozers unlike the ones that exist now, and with tractors, we destroyed the villages and kicked out all the Arabs out, and I remember something that has always struck me. It was how the children and the women threw themselves in front of the tractors and refused to leave. There was a strong resistance of the Palestinians against the destruction of their villages, and that had really touched me."
In The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Israeli Historian Benny Morris describes how following the expulsion of the Palestinians, Aharon Zisling, the Minister of Agriculture, expressed his disgust concerning the situation to the Israeli cabinet on November 17, 1948,
""I couldn't sleep all night. I felt that things that were going on were hurting my soul, the soul of my family and all of us here ... Now Jews too have behaved like Nazis and my entire being has been shaken."
The truth about the Palestinian Diaspora, or the Naqba, as it is referred to by present day Palestinians, is still denied by today's Israeli government.
Other Israelis, however, who had lived it and sometimes even helped create the Naqba, do not deny the fact that Arabs were expelled.
Yosef Weitz director of the Jewish National Fund's Lands Department once wrote, "It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both people ... the only solution is a Land of Israel, at least a western Land of Israel without Arabs. There is no room here for compromise. ... There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries ... Not one village must be left, not one (Bedouin) tribe."
For people like Yosef Weitz, the expulsion was necessary for the creation and survival of Israel. These latter Israelis usually play a role, which as Jews, they seem entitled to: their role as victims.
This self-victimization, however, does not seem to be a characteristic inculcated in their modern post-Holocaust identity, but rather is a political strategy. Since the foundation of Israel, the Palestinians have been portrayed as aggressive, anti-Semitic terrorists who want to take over Israel and want to make the life of Jews a living hell. The Palestinians are Goliath, and the Jews are David.
For example, during the present conflict, the new uprising or Intifada, the American media and [US Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright herself have said that the Palestinians were besieging Israel.
This statement seems ridiculous when you see the reality in the streets.
The Palestinians are trying to free their homeland (the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem) from Israeli occupation. They haven't even approached the land of Israel. Thus, the Palestinians are not besieging Israel.
It is the Israeli tanks that encircle the Palestinian villages and refugee camps, and it is not the Palestinian stone throwers that are encircling the Israeli cities! It is the Israeli Apache helicopters that fire missiles on Palestinian demonstrators and homes. It is the Israelis that even under the Barak government confiscate Palestinian land and hand it to new Jewish immigrants from Russia and the United States. The 160 deaths and the 7000 wounded are Palestinian. So who is besieging whom?
Who is David and who is Goliath? If the Native Americans ever wanted to get back the land that they lost 200 years ago and demonstrated, and the United States responded by firing LAW missiles at the reservations, would Madeleine Albright say that the Native Americans are besieging the USA?
To prove that Israel's security was in danger, Dr. Netanyahu, ex-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's father and university professor in the USA, openly stated that the Arab race was inherently violent. Rabbi Ovadia Joseph, head of the Shass party, called the Arabs "snakes", and Arafat himself has usually been compared to Hitler.
When viewed as such, the Palestinians seem to be the kind that should never be trusted and never be believed, especially when they declare that they accept the existence of Israel, an acceptance, Yasser Arafat did in 1974.
In the same 1984 France 3 TV documentary on the war of 1948, presenter Philippe Alfonsi succeeded in bringing to the same table Mrs. Raymonda Tawill, head of the Palestinian Press Agency, and Mr. Abba Eban, president of the committee on foreign affairs at the Knesset, to talk about the first Arab-Israeli war.
At one point, Raymonda Tawill deviated from the subject and the war of 1948 and said, "I want my state, we Palestinians want our state. Now we accept the state of Israel. Where is our nation? Why hasn't our nation been founded yet? Why do the Israelis still refuse to give the Palestinians their stateä? The circumstances have changedä. We demand our rights. Arafat, all the Arab nations, the Fez Plan, the Geneva Plan, they all declare clearly that we accept the two states."
During the interview, right when Mrs. Tawill said that she accepted the Israeli State, Mr. Eban removed his microphone and consequently left the room, demanding presenter Philippe Alfonsi to not broadcast the interview.
Apparently, Raymonda Tawill had put Abba Eban in an embarrassing situation by publicly accepting Israel and presenting a cooperative image; the Israelis have always refused to acknowledge in the Palestinians.
In the International Herald Tribune of November 2, 2000, Senior Security Adviser for Israel, Danny Yatom, deplored the fact that Israel had to deploy repressive machinery against the Palestinians, and, thus, loose its image as a "besieged victim".
When discussing on how to respond to the Palestinians, Danny Yatom told Israeli television,
"We have to consider our reaction and we have to do this cool-headedly. We don't have to attack with such force and weaponry that we remind the whole world that we are the stronger party."
In the name of security, Israel had invaded Palestine and the Golan Heights in 1967 and Southern Lebanon in 1982. It used these areas as "buffer zones". In the name of security, Israel has also deployed soldiers and sometimes tanks to protect the settlers that chose to live in Arab villages. In the name of security, Israel has destroyed Palestinian homes and villages. It is for this reason that self-victimization is dangerous, because it tends to portray the other as dangerous and uses all means (even invasion and transgression) for "self security". Haven't the Nazis, the Serbs, and the Apartheid South Africans used the same tactic? They declared the other side dangerous and, thus, for their own security went on to annihilate, expel, or simply humiliate it.
So is Israel really trying to protect its land, a land the Palestinians have already accepted, or does it want to expand its borders?
The media in the West has consistently failed to illustrate Israel's racist policy towards the Palestinians. Fortunately, some intellectuals have raised their voice and condemned Israel's policies and the continuing colonization of Palestinian land. Ironically, most of these intellectuals are Jewish and often Israeli too. They are journalists and writers like Norman Finkelstein, Benny Morris, Simha Flapan, Tom Segev, Avi Schlaim, Ilan PappÈ, Amnon Kapeliouk, Gideon Levy, Edmond El Maleh, Rabbi Michael Lerner, or Amira Hass.
This latter, a journalist at Ha'aretz, a very liberal Israeli newspaper, described the reason for this phenomenon:
" In Ha'aretz, we enjoy a bigger liberty than at the New York Times, at Le Monde, or at the Guardian, where any journalist who published the beginning of half the fourth of what I write would be taxed with anti-Semitism."
The eternalizing of the specter of the Holocaust and its absorption into Jewish identity has rendered the Jews and, consequently, Israel eternal victims immunized against any blame or criticism. This phenomenon has put the Western journalist and academia in a delicate situation, so that when referring to Israel, it would always assume a "pro-Israeli impartiality".
Many people, when reading my article, will probably call me an anti-Semite.
- First of all, for me these people are just falling in the same problem I have just dared to criticize.
- Secondly, I cannot be an anti-Semite, since as an Arab, I am a Semite myself, and
- Third, as a Moslem, I respect and revere the Jewish religion. I do not support the Palestinians because they are Arab or Moslem. I support them because it is the just thing to do.
I also support the Animist Sudan People's Liberation Army against the Arab government of Sudan and I also support the Christian Timorese resistance against the Moslem nation of Indonesia.
Throughout this century, the West has first treated the Jews as inferiors and persecuted them, and then, in a guilty desire for reparation, has treated them as superiors and adored them. In both cases, the West has forgotten to do the essential, to treat the Jews as human beings, equal and as fallible as every one else.