Truth be told, the Holocaust was an Arab story too

...The ghost of Nazi-inspired, anti-Jewish bigotry was never exorcised from the Arab world. In fact Arabs became its torch-bearers. Adolph Eichmann himself hoped his “Arab friends” would continue his battle against the Jews who were always the “principal war criminals” and “principal aggressors.” He hadn’t managed to complete his task of “total annihilation,” but the Muslims could still complete it for him.

Lyn Julius..
Times of Israel..
31 January '15..






On the day that the world commemorated the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, the UK liberal newspaper The Guardian declared in an editorial :

“The Arabs, meanwhile, cannot be blamed for feeling that Europe’s blood debt to the Jews was paid with what they see as their territory.”

The myth of the Arabs as innocent bystanders, who had no responsibility for the Holocaust — and indeed, paid the price for a European crime when Israel was established — is widely believed.

The Arabs, like other third-world peoples, are only ever seen as victims of western oppression and colonialism. They cannot themselves be guilty of oppressing others.

The West self-righteously deplores the old European anti-Semitism of the ‘far right’. But a new Green-Brown-Red anti-Semitism — encouraged by an alliance of the Far Left, the Greens and Islamist sympathizers — is studiously downplayed, ignored by the media, or blamed on Israel.

Truth to tell, the virus of Nazi anti-Semitism was exported to the Arab and Muslim world as early as the 1930s. It gave ideological inspiration to Arab nationalist parties like the Ba’athists in Syria and Iraq and paramilitary groups like Young Egypt, founded in 1933. Anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are the central plank of the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, and their ideological cousins, Islamic State, who seek today to impose Allah’s kingdom on earth through jihad and forced conversion of non-Muslims.

The Holocaust was, in the words of author Robert Satloff, as much an Arab story as a European. In spite of efforts to trumpet the stories of individual ‘Righteous’ Muslims, who rescued Jews (particularly in Albania), scholars continue to uncover evidence of Arab sympathy and collaboration with Nazism.

Said Walter Doehle, German Consul in Jerusalem in 1937: ”

Palestinian Arabs in all social strata have great sympathies for the new Germany and its Führer. .… If a person identified himself as a German when faced with threats from an Arab crowd, this alone generally allowed him to pass freely. But when some identified themselves by making the “Heil Hitler” salute, in most cases the Arabs’ attitude became expressions of open enthusiasm, and the German gave ovations, to which the Arabs responded loudly.

When Tunisia came under direct Nazi occupation between November 1942 and May 1943, some 2,000 Jews were sent to work in labour camps. The reaction of Tunisia’s Muslim majority was, according to Robert Satloff, ‘widespread indifference.’

Gestures of support and active assistance for the minority being displaced, disenfranchised, plundered and conscripted into forced labour were very rare. Arab passers-by would publicly insult and physically attack individuals.

In praise of Holocaust inversion

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
16 May '10

Under the title "Arabs have a complex relationship with the Holocaust", Professor Gilbert Achcar from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, recently promoted his newly published book The Arabs and the Holocaust at The Guardian's "Comment is Free" website.

Achcar starts his article by noting - or rather, complaining - that Holocaust denial in the Arab world is widely covered in the Western media. While he acknowledges that "Holocaust denial has been on the rise in Arab countries during the last two decades," he loses no time to come up with "explanations" - or rather, excuses - for this phenomenon. On the basis of these excuses, he then blithely asserts:

Holocaust denial is not primarily an expression of antisemitism, as western Holocaust denial certainly is, but an expression of what I call the 'anti-Zionism of fools'. Yet it remains a minority phenomenon in the Arab world, fought by enlightened intellectuals and politically educated activists who explain that such attitudes are not only based on ignorance but do a disservice to the Palestinian cause. They point to the way any utterances of Holocaust denial are relayed by pro-Israeli websites, which use them in their propaganda."

In other words, Professor Achcar wants his readers to believe that Arab Holocaust deniers are just ignorant anti-Zionist fools who are a minority that is valiantly fought by intellectuals and political activists, whose most important argument seems to be that Holocaust denial is politically counter-productive.

Since I haven't yet read Professor Achcar's book, I can't say if he makes any attempt to support his claim that Holocaust denial "remains a minority phenomenon in the Arab world". However, it is a very well-documented fact that antisemitism, not to mention anti-Zionism, is anything but a "minority phenomenon" in the Arab and Muslim world. To quote just one relevant finding from the annual report of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism in 2006:

The perception that the Jews (or "Israel," "the Mossad" or "Zionism") are behind every disaster befalling humanity and particularly those affecting Arabs and Muslims continues to dominate the Arab discourse."

(Read full article)

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