[Marxism] Zionist complains that holocaust is becoming weapon of enemy -- as it should

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

'An indication that the Zionists feel they are beginning -- just beginning,
but this is VERY significant -- to lose control of the discussion of the
holocaust. The holocaust is supposed to belong exclusively to the Jews, and
actually exclusively to the Zionists, as a weapon against any and all
enemies. But in fact it belongs to progressive and advancing humanity, just
what happened to the natives in the Americas and so forth.

That what happened in Gaza resembles the industrial mass murder of the Jews
by the Hitler regime is inescapable. The distinctions -- there were fewer
Palestinians in Gaza, they didn't kill all or even most of them THIS TIME --
fall into the categories of significant historical facts that create no
moral difference.

The latest articles by Jean Moise Brandberg and Shlomo Avneri -- a man who
is clearly putting his life on the line in the Israel of today -- are
powerful answers to what follows.
Fred Feldman


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/30/AR2009013002
770.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM 
Using the Holocaust to Attack the Jews
 

By Walter Reich
Sunday, February 1, 2009; Page B02 

Dozens of cities held ceremonies last week to mark International Holocaust
Remembrance Day. The good news is that the dead were remembered. The bad
news is that even as the Holocaust is becoming a fixture in the world's
memory, it is also being increasingly used as a weapon against the Jews and
the Jewish state. 

For some, ironically, the acknowledgment of the Holocaust's reality has
become a screen behind which anti-Semitism has gathered new force. The
hard-core Jew-haters spent decades denying that the best-documented genocide
in world history ever took place. That won them such derision that even many
anti-Semites have begun to admit the reality of the Holocaust -- and now are
hoping that simply by doing so, they can immunize themselves from the charge
that they're anti-Semites in the first place. How can you be an anti-Semite,
they figure, if you recognize the Holocaust? 

But as some people who don't like Jews have found, it's worth acknowledging
the Holocaust if you can then turn it into a cudgel against the Jews. And
that they've done, in spades. According to this crowd, the Jews today have
become Nazis. The Jewish state is now supposedly carrying out a Holocaust
against the Palestinians. Jews, the haters say, have always been evil, and
their evil is only growing. 


Of course, not all criticisms of Israel are the product of such bigoted
logic. People of good will around the world are naturally shocked by the
tragic and appalling deaths of Palestinian civilians, including those killed
in the recent war in the Gaza Strip. Like any country, Israel can be
criticized. But the massive and unceasing eruptions of outrage against the
Jewish state -- in a world in which other countries and groups have, often
provoking barely any outrage, engaged in immensely more destructive and
immoral behavior -- can only be explained in a few ways. One is that
attacking Israel has become a means of attacking Israel's ally, the United
States. Another is that over-the-top attacks on Israel, particularly those
invoking Holocaust language, have become a means of once again attacking the
Jews. 

The Anti-Defamation League has documented the way this weapon was used
during the recent war with Hamas. Here are a few of the placards spotted at
rallies: In Times Square, the group reported such signs as, "Israel: The
Fourth Reich," "Stop Israel's Holocaust," "Holocaust by Holocaust
Survivors," "Stop the Nazi Genocide in Gaza" and "Nazi Genocide, Israeli
Genocide." In Chicago: "Palestinian Holocaust in Gaza Now." In a Los Angeles
demonstration, the Star of David in an Israeli flag was said to have been
replaced by a swastika, accompanied by the words, "Upgrade to Holocaust
Version 2.0." In San Diego: "Stop the Israeli Holocaust on Gaza." And the
league reported that one rally in Washington included an effigy of the
Israeli prime minister wearing a swastika armband and holding a dead baby. 

The Gaza war provoked similar attacks from some world leaders and people of
influence. "The Holocaust, that is what is happening right now in Gaza,"
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in televised comments, according to
Reuters. The New York Times quoted a Catholic cardinal who argued that Gaza
increasingly "resembled a big concentration camp." And according to the
Jerusalem Post, a Norwegian diplomat based in Saudi Arabia sent out an
e-mail from her Foreign Ministry account in which she wrote, "The
grandchildren of Holocaust survivors from World War II are doing to the
Palestinians exactly what was done to them by Nazi Germany." She reportedly
also attached paired photos designed to suggest that Gaza was equivalent to
the Holocaust: Next to the iconic photo of the Jewish child in the Warsaw
Ghetto being menaced by a rifle-toting Nazi soldier, the diplomat is said to
have placed an "image of an Israeli soldier aiming his weapon at a
Palestinian boy." 

Are all those who have accused Israel of being a Nazi state anti-Semites?
Hardly. There's genuine anger in the Muslim world, as well as in Europe and
elsewhere, about Israel's actions in Gaza. The suffering is terrible. So are
the images of devastation Israel left behind. And there are also plenty of
people who are angry at Israel because it stands for the reviled United
States. 

But the reality is that much of the vitriol directed at Israel has indeed
been spouted by anti-Semites. Not only have they hurled the Nazi canard at
Israel, they've expressed clear anti-Semitism -- some of it openly violent
or even eliminationist. The pro-Israel but reliable Middle East Media and
Research Institute has been documenting anti-Semitism on Palestinian
television for years, including calls for the murder of Jews. It reports
that, the day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, one Egyptian
cleric admitted on an Islamist TV channel that the Holocaust had happened --
and added that he hoped that one day Muslims would do to the Jews what the
Germans had done to them. To demonstrate what he had in mind, according to
the institute, he showed footage of heaps of Jewish corpses being bulldozed
into pits. 

In designating an International Holocaust Remembrance Day back in 2005, the
U.N. General Assembly acted with noble intentions, even if parts of the
world body still aim to delegitimize Israel. Such commemorations help the
world understand that the goal of the Holocaust was the annihilation of an
entire people -- and help them appreciate the vast differences between that
event and, for example, the war in Gaza. But even as the Holocaust has been
increasingly acknowledged and explained, it also has been increasingly used
as a cudgel to beat Jews and the Jewish state. 

wreich@xxxxxxx 


Walter Reich, a professor of international affairs at George Washington
University, is a former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. 







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