Re: RE: Under Andalusian skies

[Michael Pugliese <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From:
Michael Pugliese <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>

To:
Progressive Sociology <psn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Thiago Oppermann <topp8564
@mail.usyd.edu.au>

Date:
Tue, 16 Apr 2002 12:02:11 -0700

Subject:
Re: Palestinian Holocaust Denial

http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/17nordbruch.html
The Socio-historical Background of Holocaust Denial in Arab Countries:

Arab reactions to Roger Garaudy's
The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics

By Goetz Nordbruch

Abstract


Historical revisionism and Holocaust denial are widely encountered in Arab
countries. References



to the Holocaust as a ?Zionist myth? are continuously expressed in public
discourse, coming to a height in 1996 when numerous articles were published
about Roger Garaudy?s book, The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics. Articles
denying the historical reality of German crimes against the Jews during the
Nazi period are often regarded as mere ?curiosities? and explained away as
being merely an instrument used to delegitimize the existence of the State of

Israel. This paper reconsiders that assumption. Given the presence and vigor
of
Holocaust denial in the Arab media, an analysis of the reactions to Garaudy?s

book can reveal some of the farreaching social and historical origins of
Holocaust denial. Irrespective of its function within specific social
conflicts, the dissemination of antisemitic codes ? which includes Holocaust
denial ? has to be explained within the context of more general ideological
developments. This study, therefore, provides new approaches to the analysis
of
the elements of Arab antisemitism through tracing antisemitic thought back to

its socio-historical interaction with nationalism, and contemporary Islamist
thought, reviewing both content and cause. This way, the origins of anti-
Jewish
expressions in Arab public discourse can be concretized.



Roger Garaudy and Holocaust Denial in the Arab Media



Six million Jews dead? No way, they were much fewer. Let?s stop with this
fairytale exploited by Israel to capture international solidarity. (La
Republicca, 24 March 2000)

This comment by Ikrima Said Sabri, the Palestinian Authority-appointed imam  of
the al-Aqsa mosque and Mufti of Jerusalem, is the anticipated harsh response
to
the Vatican document ?We Remember,? that asked forgiveness for actions
committed by Roman Catholics during the Holocaust. In addition, French
President Jacques Chirac?s plea for forgivenesss for French collaboration in
the persecution and extermination of Jews during World War II, and statements

made by the Pope during his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories  in
spring 2000, sparked negative reactions in the Arab media. Somewhat earlier,
countless articles and comments in the Arab media on Roger Garaudy?s The
Founding Myths of Israeli Politics (1996) depict the Holocaust as a ?Zionist
myth? or ?Zionist lie? which has become a central issue in contemporary Arab
political-historical discourse. While some journalists and academics (Hazem
Saghiyeh and Azmi Bishara, for example) demand recognition of the Holocaust  as
an extraordinary crime against humanity, opponents of any concession to the
Jewish or Israeli collective memory remain numerous and prominent. [1]

Well-documented studies have shown that Holocaust denial can be found in the
majority of Arabic newspapers, but detailed surveys of the social and
historical background of this phenomenon are still missing. Even though
Holocaust denial (as with anti-Jewish stereotypes in articles and caricature)

is identified as a manifestation of antisemitism, it is usually ascribed as
merely an element of the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict, an instrument for
delegitimizing the Israeli state. [2] Bernard Lewis, who has studied  different
facets of antisemitism in Arab countries, concludes that ?[i]f mainstream  Arab
leaders can bring themselves to follow the example of Sadat and enter into a
dialogue with Israel...then it is possible that the anti-semitic campaign  will
fade away, and be confined, as in the modern West, to fringe groups and  fringe
regimes.? [3]

My aim is to reconsider this assumption. Given the presence and vigor of
Holocaust negation in reactions to The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics,  and
the wide range of voices from different religious and political spectra
articulated within this debate, I will use this controversy as an example of
different patterns of reception within the Arab political-historical
discourse.
[4] Contextualizing Holocaust denial within a wider framework of ideological
and historical developments, the phenomenon appears as a specific expression
of
a cultural pattern of antisemitic thought. Far from being simply an arbitrary

import from European antisemitism, the ideological basis for the adoption of
European stereotypes into Arab societies should be scrutinized. The negation
and questioning of German crimes against the European Jews ? expressed within

the context of the contemporary Arab- Israeli conflict? should thus be
explained as a ?most modern form of anti-Semitism.? [5] Hence, without
neglecting the importance of the specific political conflict in which these
articles are articulated, I will stress the historical formation of  underlying
thought patterns and ideological concepts in order to understand the
attraction
of Holocaust denial in Arab public discourse on Garaudy?s book.
Soon after the release of The Founding Myths, Arab newspapers published
interviews with the author and reports on the charge of antisemitic  incitement
he was facing in the French courts. [6] His enormous popularity in the Arab
countries obviously contributed to the intensive debate triggered by his  book.
In view of the numerous translations of his earlier writings about Marxism  and
Islam, it was only a question of time before Arab editors would find interest

in his latest work. [7] In France, a first edition of The Founding Myths of
Israeli Politics was produced in French and distributed in late 1995 for
subscribers of the French publishing house La Vieille Taupe. With extensive
chapters about an alleged Holocaust myth and comparisons of Nazism and
Zionism,
Garaudy openly referred to Robert Faurisson and David Irving and their
Holocaust denying publications. The beginning public controversy and the
report
to the police in January 1996 on his call for incitement forced him to
rearrange for the already-envisaged second edition. Published as samizdat at
his own expense, a slightly revised edition was released in spring 1996.
Despite efforts by him and his lawyers to present his theses as directed
against Zionism as a political movement, and not against Jews or Judaism as a

religion, in February 1998 a Paris court ruled against him. Garaudy?s book
questioned the number of Jewish victims during the Holocaust, and argued that

there was no extermination policy as such, and therefore the court found his
book to be in violation of the Gayssot Law, under which Holocaust denial and
antisemitic incitement is a punishable offence.
Despite his obvious turn to the French extreme Right, the favorable reaction
to
Garaudy in Arabic newspapers and magazines was overwhelming. [8] Garaudy was
invited to the Cairo International Book Fair in 1998, and during his visits  to
the Middle East, gained widespread public support and funding for his legal
case, peaking in the weeks before the French court delivered its verdict. A
number of Arabic translations of his book were offered by publishers such as
Dar ash-Shuruq in Cairo and Beirut, and Dar al-Kitab in Damascus. [9] Protest

letters on his behalf were written by the Palestinian Writers Association,  the
Arab Lawyers Federation, and other organizations. Well-known politicians and
intellectuals, such as Shaykh Muhammad Al-Tantauwi of the al-Azhar  University,
former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, Egyptian author and Nobel
laureate
Nadjib Mahfus, and historian Muhammad Hassanin Haikal publicly commented in
his
favor. None of these figures questioned Garaudy?s claim that the Holocaust  was
a Zionist invention.
<snip>
http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/17nordbruch.html

4/16/02 6:36:43 AM, Thiago Oppermann <topp8564@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>In one of the articles forwarded by Michael Pugliese we find:
>
>"For many Palestinians, denying the Holocaust is an effective
>way   to  reject any Jewish  claim to Israel."
>
>Whichever way one looks at it, this is pretty crazy statement, which only
>makes sense within a fairly narrow Zionist framework.  There is one main
>reason why Palestinian people take to Holocaust denial and that is the fact
>the Holocaust is often used by their enemies for political capital. One
>might argue whether or not this is justified, but it is pretty much obvious
>empirical fact about pro-Israeli politics.  So one can quite legitimately
>ask whether Palestinians would not seek to undermine the historical veracity
>of the Holocaust to pull the rug under this very effective political
>maneuver. The direct parallel is the denial of the Nakba which seeks to
>undermine whatever political mileage it provides Palestinians. (Please note
>that I am only referring to the politics of denial, I certainly don't mean
>to compare the magnitude of one atrocity with the other.) In both cases, the
>political use of one's suffering has led, unsurprisingly, to politically
>motivated scepticism, which in turn has led to the politically motivated
>denunciation of scepticism, which is what we see here. But even so, the
>statement still doesn't make sense, as it relies on the idea that the
>Holocaust is the sole justification for Jewish claims to Israel. Why should
>Palestinians believe this? What evidence is there that they do? Would it not
>be more accurate to say that Palestinians who come to doubt the Holocaust
>simply didn't really believe in the Jewish claims to Israel to begin with?
>
>So, as an analysis of rhetoric, it is biased, as a statement about the
>attitudes of Palestinian Holocaust-doubters, it seems to be quite wrong.
>
>
>Thiago Oppermann
>
>
5/8/02 10:35:18 AM, "Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>Though I totally disagree with Goldhagen and his ilk, weren't German Jews
>pretty tolerated and integrated in, say, 1930? That is, can't anti-Jewish
>bigotry come to the surface even where the role of Jews is normalized?
>
>(I use the phrase anti-Jewish bigotry because the word "anti-semitism" has
>been abused, excluding all Semites besides Jews. Arabs have taken the main
>brunt of anti-semitism in recent years.)
>
>Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Louis Proyect [mailto:lnp3@xxxxxxxxx]
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 10:22 AM
>> To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
>> wsn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; psn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [PEN-L:25761] Under Andalusian skies
>>
>>
>> On April 11th a gasoline truck exploded in front of an
>> ancient synagogue on
>> the resort island of Djerba, which is part of Tunisia. At
>> first considered
>> an accident, it was subsequently revealed to be a terrorist act. This
>> event--along with synagogue desecrations in Europe attributed
>> to Arab or
>> North African immigrants--have given ammunition to Zionist
>> commentators who
>> view anti-Semitism in essentialist terms. They are trying to
>> reduce Islamic
>> peoples to eternal foes of the Jews, just as Daniel Goldhagen
>> did for the
>> Germans.
>>
>> A careful reading of press coverage reveals a different
>> reality. In the
>> April 15th NY Times, Donald G. McNeil Jr. reports that the
>> Jewish district
>> in Djerba, called a 'hara', was never a ghetto:
>>
>> >>Tunisia's Jews have never been walled in. Police cars have been
>> constantly present for years, but are there to protect this
>> island's tiny
>> Jewish enclaves.
>>
>> Tunisia, a center of Jewish life since the Roman Empire, was
>> a refuge for
>> those fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, Greek persecution and
>> Sicilian raids
>> on Libya.
>>
>> "We're the shop window," said Rene Trabelsi, a tour operator
>> whose father
>> is president of the Ghriba Synagogue. "We prove to the world
>> that there's
>> religious freedom and tolerance in Tunisia. We're the
>> favorite minority,
>> like a girl in a family of seven boys."<<
>>
>> We also learn from McNeil that Jewish life in Tunisia absorbed Islamic
>> culture:
>>
>> "Boys do not expect a bar mitzvah, party because religious
>> law does not
>> call for it, the rabbi said. Young men wear blue jeans and
>> skullcaps, but
>> older men often wear baggy-bottomed Turkish shorts, slippers
>> and a sort of
>> mashed red fez called a kabous."
>>
>> Describing the relationship of his community to Tunisian
>> society, the rabbi
>> of the Djerba synagogue said the community felt "integrated,
>> not assimilated."
>>
>> One of the greatest tragedies of the Zionist project was the
>> destruction of
>> this historic amity between two peoples with so much in common. In an
>> important article titled " Arabs and Jews Can Live in Peace"
>> that appeared
>> in Socialist Worker, John Rose wrote:
>>
>> >>Last month I was in Egypt, where I had the good fortune to spend a
>> morning with the truly remarkable Youssef Darwish, a 91 year
>> old Jewish
>> Communist veteran of the post-war workers' struggles that formed the
>> backcloth to Nasser's coup in 1952.
>>
>> Youssef, all faculties intact and chomping away at cigars,
>> waxed lyrical on
>> many issues, not least the rich texture of Jewish life in Egypt in the
>> early part of the 20th century. It's standard in these sort
>> of discussions
>> to debate the prominent role Jews played in the Communist movement
>> throughout the Arab world. And of course we did.
>>
>> But what struck me more was something else. It was the long historical
>> Jewish attachment to and involvement in Egypt--one of its
>> greatest medieval
>> synagogues still stands--and the way this blossomed in the early 20th
>> century, with now forgotten cultural expressions in painting,
>> books and
>> later film.
>>
>> As Youssef says, the banner of independence was being raised,
>> and the idea
>> of achieving equality among the different social groups was vigorously
>> pursued. Later Zionism sucked nearly all the Jews out of
>> Egypt and told
>> them they were coming "home".
>>
>> It told the same nonsense to Jews from all over the Arab
>> world, and helped
>> them to forget their long history as it recruited them to
>> build the Iron
>> Wall against their new Palestinian Arab neighbours.
>> Recovering that history
>> someday soon will be an important part of showing just how
>> Arabs and Jews
>> can live together in peace.<<
>>
>> (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/1795/sw179512.htm)
>>
>> Not only were Jews sucked out of Egypt, they were also sucked out of
>> Tunisia. Only about 2,000 Jews remain there, down from more
>> than 100,000 in
>> 1948 -- and about 1,100 of them live in Djerba. They were
>> ripped out of a
>> society that valued them and placed into one that now suffers
>> permanent
>> warfare while visiting atrocities on the Palestinians.
>>
>> I had already begun thinking about these questions, but after
>> attending
>> back-to-back concerts in New York City featuring the Lebanese Marcel
>> Khalife and the Moroccan Jew Emil Zrihan I was convinced to
>> examine the
>> ties between Arabs and Sephardic Jews more closely. The World Music
>> Institute, one of New York's most important cultural
>> institutions, produced
>> both concerts. (http://www.worldmusicinstitute.org)
>>
>> Khalife (http://www.marcelkhalife.com) opened his April 27th Saturday
>> evening performance with an instrumental from his new album titled
>> "Concerto Al Andalus." All proceeds go to support
>> humanitarian aid to the
>> Palestinian people. "Al Andalus" is also called Andalusia. It
>> was the most
>> prosperous and culturally advanced province in Spain, when it
>> was under
>> Islamic rule. He preceded his instrumental with remarks to
>> the effect that
>> this was when we were at our best.
>>
>> By the same token, Andalusia is an important symbol for
>> Zrihan as well.
>> (Zrihan was sucked out of Morocco at the age of nine into Israel.) The
>> program notes for his Sunday, April 28th concert state:
>>
>> "For more than a thousand years the musical style of the
>> Arabs and Jews
>> have flourished and intermingled in the western Mediterranean
>> region of
>> southern Spain and North Africa. For nearly seven centuries
>> at the Muslim
>> courts of Cordoba, Sevilla and Granada in southern Spain the arts of
>> poetry, music and architecture flourished. the music known as "al 'Ala
>> l-Andalusia" was born in this environment and can be traced
>> to the early
>> 9th century A.D. with the arrival of the Persian musician
>> Ziryab at the
>> court of 'Abd er-Rahman II in Cordoba. At his courts and those of
>> subsequent Sultans throughout Andalusia music played an increasingly
>> important role; Arab, Jewish and Christian musicians and poets were
>> employed and played together."
>>
>> Zrihan performs in virtually the same style that existed 1000
>> years ago in
>> Tunisia, Morocco and most of Spain. He mixes elements of the Jewish
>> cantorial tradition with Arab-Andalusian song that evening,
>> with backing
>> from musicians in the same ecumenical spirit. The violinist
>> was a Moroccan
>> Jew, the pianist a Lebanese Christian, the oud player and
>> percussionist
>> Lebanese Muslims. He impressed the audience with his mastery of the
>> 'mawwal', a virtuosic and highly ornamented improvisational
>> style that can
>> be found throughout the Arab and Islamic world. The Egyptian
>> Om Kalthoum
>> was considered the greatest practitioner of this style during
>> her lifetime.
>>
>> The term Sephardic is derived from the Ladino word
>> "Sepharad", which meant
>> Spain. Ladino was the language of the Jews who lived in the
>> vast Muslim
>> empire that included most of Spain, North Africa, the Arab
>> world and Turkey
>> just as Yiddish was the language associated with the
>> Ashkenazi or European
>> Jews. Ladino is still spoken today in certain enclaves, while
>> it remains
>> the liturgical language for virtually all Sephardim.
>>
>> Despite Zionist attempts to paint Muslim and Jew as eternal
>> enemies, there
>> is an important trend *within* Jewish scholarship that
>> depicts Muslim Spain
>> and North Africa as a Golden Age for Jews from 950 to 1150
>> AD. Three names
>> stand out: Heinrich Graetz, a nineteenth century trailblazer
>> from Germany;
>> a contemporary Princeton scholar named S.D. Goitein; and
>> Eliyahu Ashtor, an
>> Israeli and also a contemporary.
>>
>> Goitein is the author of a two-thousand-page study titled
>> "Mediterranean
>> Society" that is based on so-called 'genizah' (storeroom) archives
>> retrieved from a synagogue in medieval Cairo. Observant Jews were
>> prohibited from destroying documents with God's name on them,
>> so they ended
>> up in such archives. They include personal correspondence, commercial
>> contracts, tax records, etc.
>>
>> For the casual reader, Goitein's "Jews and Arabs: Their
>> Contacts Through
>> the Ages" makes more sense even though it is out of print. In
>> a chapter
>> dealing with Jewish culture under Islam, Goitein writes:
>>
>> "The basic fact about Jewish-Arabic thought is that Greek
>> science and Greek
>> methods of thinking made their entrance into Jewish life
>> mainly through the
>> gates of Arab-Muslim literature. With the Arabic-writing
>> Jewish doctors,
>> mathematicians, astronomers and philosophers of the ninth and tenth
>> centuries, science, in the Greek sense of the word, for the first time
>> became known and practiced among the bulk of the Jewish community. All
>> genuine Jewish reasoning before that time consisted either of simple,
>> practical observations and conclusions, or of mythological
>> conceptions, no
>> matter how profound."
>>
>> Liberated from the heavy hand of orthodoxy, the Jewish
>> denizens of Spain
>> could now rise to the highest levels of the professions and
>> the arts. The
>> concluding paragraphs of V.1 of Eliyahu Ashtor's "The Jews of
>> Moslem Spain"
>> evoke the warm and supportive environment Jews found
>> themselves in. It is
>> part of a lengthy account of a reading by famed Jewish poet
>> Ibn Khalfon. It
>> is important also to consider that Jewish poetry was strongly
>> influenced by
>> the Arab style. Ashtor writes:
>>
>> >>At last the host gestured to the poet to declaim his verse, and Ibn
>> Khalfon recited a florid poem in which he proclaimed all the
>> qualities of
>> the new officeholder, his deeds in behalf of his
>> coreligionists, the alms
>> he gave to the poor, and the merits of his forefathers, who
>> were nobles in
>> Israel. Not all those present understood the beautiful
>> biblical Hebrew, but
>> all listened intently; not a sound was heard. When the poet
>> had finished he
>> bowed to the host, who drew forth from the folds of his coat
>> a purse full
>> of gold pieces and handed them to Ibn Khalfon. All his
>> friends voiced cries
>> of enthusiasm over the beauty of the poem and the generosity
>> of the noble
>> lord. A few arose from their places to stroll in the corners of the
>> courtyard, where tall trees stood; others remained seated and
>> engaged in
>> spiritual but friendly conversation.
>>
>> It was a warm and pleasant night, the skies were strewn with
>> innumerable
>> stars, and the moon shone with a brilliant light. From a
>> distance could be
>> heard a monotonous voice, yet pleasant to the ear: "There is
>> no God but
>> Allah, and Mohammed is the prophet of Allah. Life to those
>> who pray to Him,
>> life to those who serve Him." Again and again the voice
>> repeated its cry
>> saturated with yearnings. This was the muezzin calling the Moslem to
>> prayer, for this was the month of Ramadan, when the call to prayer is
>> sounded before dawn. East and West had met under Andalusian skies.<<
>>
>> Louis Proyect
>> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>>
>
>