Bataween
Point of No Return
11 February '10
You know that feeling of exasperation you get when some bumbling but well-meaning old relative tries to intervene in a family row, but only manages to make things worse? That was how I felt when I read news of Serge Klarsfeld's latest tour of the Arab world.
Under the auspices of the Aladdin project, sponsored by UNESCO, the French veteran Nazi hunter, whose father was deported to a death camp, has just concluded in Baghdad a series of talks on the Holocaust in Tunis, Cairo, Amman, Istanbul, Rabat, Jerusalem and Nazareth in northern Israel. His purpose? To fight Holocaust denial in the Arab world.
In itself, that is a perfectly laudable objective. We know that Holocaust denial has reached epidemic proportions in Arab and Muslim countries. Only through Holocaust education might a future Holocaust be prevented. And Arabs who understand the full extent of the mass murder by industrialised methods of a third of the Jewish people might just begin to appreciate the need for a Jewish state.
Except that the 73-year-old Klarsfeld went further, and set up a false moral equivalence between Jewish suffering under the Nazis and Muslim suffering at the hands of the Israelis. In Baghdad on Monday he urged Muslims and Jews 'to learn about their mutual suffering as a way to bring them closer.'
"We must spread knowledge about works showing the common ties between Jews and Muslims, because Muslims also suffered from colonialism and humiliation...I understand that those who have lived under English and French colonialism would also want to speak of their suffering and of those who suffer Israel's presence on what they consider their land.
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Hostility toward Jews has existed since Islam came into being. In its charter, Hamas quotes the Prophet Muhammad as saying: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." Through the use of such language, the hatred of Jews is given a religious justification.
ReplyDeleteNo event in human history has been studied as thoroughly and carefully than the Holocaust. Thousands of thesis and dissertations papers have poured over all of the evidence, from anecdotal testimony to captured German war documents. Virtually every historian with a PhD in European History agrees that millions of Jews were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany. One can no more "revise" this fact than one can revise the existence of gravity. Captured German documents alone account for enough evidence to convict Nazi Germany of mass genocide in any civil (not Islamic) court. You can suggest that 5.6 million Jews were killed, instead of six million. But, you cannot deny that millions of innocent Jews were murdered. The Wannsee Conference planned the killing. Nazi concentration camp records prove that it was carried out.
Whenever we stand up to those who deny or minimize genocide we send a critical message to the world. As we continue to live in an age of genocide and ethnic cleansing, we must repel the broken ethics of our ancestors, or risk a dreadful repeat of past transgressions. We know from captured German war records that millions of innocent Jews were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany - most in gas chambers. These facts have been proven repeatedly through countless thesis and dissertation research papers. Virtually every PhD in the world will stake their career on the veracity of known Holocaust facts. Despite this knowledge, Holocaust deniers ply their mendacious poison everywhere, especially with young people on the Internet. Such deniers have only one agenda - to distort the truth in a way that promotes antagonism against the object of their hatred, or to deny the culpability of their ancestors and heroes.
Museums and mandatory public education are tools to dispel bigotry, especially racial and ethnic hatred. Books, films and presentations can reinforce the veracity of past and present genocides. They help to tell the true story of the perpetrators of genocide; and they reveal the abject terror, humiliation and degradation resulting from prejudice. It is therefore essential that we disclose the factual brutality and horror of genocide, combating the deniers’ virulent, inaccurate historical revision. We must protect vulnerable future generations from making the same mistakes.
A world that continues to allow genocide requires ethical remediation. We must show the world that religious, racial, ethnic, gender and orientation persecution is wrong; and that tolerance is our progeny's only hope. Only through such efforts can we reveal the true horror of genocide and promote the triumphant spirit of humankind.
Charles Weinblatt
Author, "Jacob's Courage"
http://jacobscourage.wordpress.com/
TY Charles for the comment and the time it took to write it. Much appreciated.
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