My weekly article in Al-Akhbar: “The Jewish Question: We and the Holocaust.”
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Ben-Ami in the DailyStar/here
“….. the past, especially when not handled with care, can be the enemy of the future and distort our reading of the challenges of the present. This is certainly the case with the analogy that Israeli leaders insist on drawing between the destruction of European Jewry in the Holocaust and the threat posed to the Jewish state by a nuclear-armed Iran….
Shimon Peres, who, …. spoke of the “threat of extermination” facing Israel.
Ehud Barak, ….. to alert world opinion against “Holocaust deniers, first and foremost the Iranian president, who calls for the destruction of the Jewish people.”
Netanyahu, …. To him, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is another Hitler….. The career of his political mentor, Menachem Begin, demonstrated that distorted analogies between past and present can inspire irresponsible policies. In his disastrous 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Begin perceived himself as a God-sent vindicator of the legacy of the Holocaust. He chose to portray what was a cynical alliance of convenience between Israel and the Christian Lebanese Forces as a lesson to humanity and a rebuke of that hypocritical Christian Europe which had betrayed the Jews during the Holocaust. He would show them how the Jewish state, created by Holocaust survivors and now led by one, would come to the rescue of a Christian minority threatened with destruction……
To Begin, Arafat in Beirut was Hitler in his Berlin bunker. Indeed, Abba Eban ridiculed Begin for behaving “as if Israel were a kind of disarmed Costa Rica and the PLO was Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, and Attila the Hun all wrapped into one.”…….”
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Categories: Arab Blogs Tags: Alexander, Attila, Begin, Beirut, Ben-Ami, Berlin, Christian, Christian Europe, Christian Lebanese, Costa Rica, destruction, Holocaust, Iran, iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad, Israel, jews during the holocaust, Lebanon, PLO, president mahmoud ahmadinejad, Shimon Peres
“The Holocaust survivors who helped build Israel “made our world better,” US Gen. David Petraeus said Thursday.” (thanks Sarah)
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“Guilt for the Holocaust lies with Nazi Germany and its allies. But an untold number of Jews, perhaps as many as hundreds of thousands – including my grandparents from the Polish town of Makow Podhalanski – were not saved and did not reach Mandatory Palestine because of the position taken by the Arabs: They succeeded in shutting the country’s gates during the darkest hour of the Jewish people.” I see. This is why Israel now opens its doors to the original inhabitants of the land. (thanks Nader)
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“Yet it is imperative to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is not only in order to deal with Holocaust deniers but also to stress the state of Israel’s importance for the continued existence of the Jewish people.”
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AFP – An 85-year-old Holocaust survivor was among a group of grandmothers who began a hunger strike in Cairo on Monday to protest against Egypt’s refusal to allow a Gaza solidarity march to proceed.
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From an article by the Israeli historian Tom Segev in Haaretz,
Reading Shoah in Gaza, about a proposal pushed by UNRWA chief John Ging to teach about the Holocaust in Gazan schools:
“This could prove an interesting battle. Most Arabs tend to view the Holocaust as a Zionist invention, and do not deal with it in school curricula, books or movies. Many deny the Holocaust; only a handful of Palestinian intellectuals condemn such denial. This struggle is to a large extent over the question of who is the real victim, but the Arab difficulty in ‘recognizing’ the Holocaust also stems from Israel’s frequent allusions to it as a justification not only for the country’s existence, but also for the continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. “
While it’s obviously true that Holocaust denial is unfortunately common in the Arab world, on what basis does he make the claim that “most Arabs tend to view of the Holocaust as a Zionist invention”? Just anecdotal evidence? Not to mention, of course, the gross irony of endless coverage of the denial of massacres half-a-century ago in a newspaper that still does not acknowledge last January’s massacre.
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AFP – The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is mulling teaching the Holocaust to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip but is facing strong opposition from residents, the head of the agency said on Wednesday.
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Moscow says Ahmadinejad statement Holocaust ‘a myth’ is ‘totally unacceptable’, especially war anniversary.
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