The Holocaust and Palestine
Edward Said would not be pleased.
The towering Palestinian American intellectual had no patience for Holocaust deniers in the Arab world or in the Palestinian liberation movement.
He understood the calamity that was the Holocaust, and he believed in telling the truth about it, and about everything else.
Writing in Le Monde Diplomatique in 1998, Said noted: “Whether we like it or not, the Jews are not ordinary colonialists. Yes, they suffered the holocaust, and yes, they are the victims of anti-Semitism.”
He went on to say, quite rightly: “But no, they cannot use those facts to continue, or initiate, the dispossession of another people that bears no responsibility for either of those prior facts.”
But he returned to the necessity of telling the truth.
“We must recognize the realities of the holocaust not as a blank check for Israelis to abuse us, but as a sign of our humanity, our ability to understand history, our requirement that our suffering be mutually acknowledged,” he wrote. “. . . The real issue is intellectual truth and the need to combat any sort of apartheid and racial discrimination, no matter who does it. There is now a creeping, nasty wave of anti-Semitism and hypocritical righteousness insinuating itself into our political thought and rhetoric. One thing must be clear in my firm opinion: we are not fighting the injustices of Zionism in order to replace them with an invidious nationalism (religious or civil) that decrees that Arabs in Palestine are more equal than others. The history of the modern Arab world - with all its political failures, its human rights abuses, its stunning military incompetences, its decreasing production, the fact that alone of all modern peoples we have receded in democratic and technological and scientific development - is disfigured by a whole series out-moded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that the Jews never suffered and that holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the Elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much, far too much currency.”
So Edward Said would be especially dismayed this week as leading figures in Palestine are denying the Holocaust and remonstrating about the U.N.’s plans to teach children about the Holocaust in the schools it runs in Gaza.
Hamas’s spiritual leader Yunis al-Astal said this would be “marketing a lie” and a “war crime,” if you can believe that.
A Hamas legislator, Jamila al-Shanti, added, “Talk about the Holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage, and religion.”
This insistence by Hamas on denying the reality of the Holocaust is as reprehensible as it is astonishing.
And it will only harden the opposition in Israel to reaching any true peace with the Palestinians.
Denying history gets you nowhere.
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Comments
Matthew Rothschild,
I'll put it bluntly, you sir, are clueless.
There's no denying the fact that Edward Said was absolutely right, there is no denying the fact that the Holocaust was an atrocity.
Similarly, there should be no denying the fact that the Palestinians have been, not only driven out of their homes, massacred while more than 400 villages were destroyed, but continue to suffer such injustices to this day.
The problem I have with your narrative and the narrative of many clueless Israel-firsters is your denial of some basic facts:
1. You expect the Palestinians to recognize every tragedy that befell Israelis and the Jewish people around the globe, yet you and the Israeli government refuse to acknowledge the tragedy that befell the Palestinian people and continues to this day.
For example, the Israeli FM recently proposed a law that would make it illegal for the Palestinian minority in Israel to commemorate the day of the Naqbah (look it up if you don't know what it is).
Not only does the average Israeli get enraged when the Naqbah is mentioned, they refuse to acknowledge it ever happened. Even worse, the Israeli Ministry of Education makes no mention of such and instead teaches Israeli students that the land was empty, inhabited by a few nomadic tribes. Can you imagine that kind of treatment of the Native American history in today's American school textbooks? Heck, even the wounded knee massacre is mentioned and taught.
2. Considering the subhuman conditions that the Palestinians are forced to live in by Israel, Gaza in particular, it's no wonder that Hamas is enraged. I don't agree with their decision, but I can understand it given the fact that after 100,000 homes were bombed in the recent attack on Gaza, 20,000 are still homeless and Israel refuses to allow humanitarian and construction materials into the Strip.
1400 Palestinians were killed in the last attack on Gaza, close to 1300 of them were civilians. And while the international community has pretty much thrown Gazans under the bus, you decry Hamas' frustration and anger.
3. Read Naomi Klein’s latest interview concerning her boycott campaign of the occupation. You'll learn a thing or two instead of being so detached from reality while calling yourself a progressive.
4. Enough with the historical revisionism on which you - sometimes - and your commenters - always - thrive.
5. Educate yourself by reading books published by some of the leading Israeli (Jewish) scholars like Tom Segev, Benny Morris, Avil Shlaim and Illan Pappe.
6. Travel to the West Bank and go visit a refugee camp - make sure to travel the way Palestinians are forced to travel (checkpoints etc.) without enjoying the privilege of "for Jewish settlers only) 3 lane highways - then come back and lecture us about Edward Said.
Had Edward Said been alive today, I don't think he would have gone as far as suddenly falling on his head and denying the Holocaust, but I'm sure you'd have gotten a good rebuke what with your one sided biased account of the current reality in the occupied territories.
Presenting things out of context and in abstract terms does not make for sound journalism. Yet, there you are doing just that. That's intellectually dishonest.