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Holocaust as propaganda weapon
Comment
Neil Berry
IS another Jewish Holocaust any longer conceivable? The former
speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, for one, finds it hard to take
seriously claims that Jews and the Jewish state are menaced still by
the specter of genocide. After all, he points out, Israel is not
only itself a heavily militarized state but enjoys the protection of
the United States, the most militarized country in the world and one
where Jews wield prodigious power and influence.
Burg in his remarkable new book, “The Holocaust Is Over: We Must
Arise from Its Ashes”, argues that Israelis and Jewish people in
general have made a fetish of the Holocaust, with lamentable
consequences. Published last year in Israel, the book maintains that
preoccupation with the catastrophe known to Jews as the “Shoah” has
prevented Israel from achieving maturity, ensuring that the national
psyche remains stuck in an ugly phase of European history. Burg says
that the Holocaust has been cynically employed as a propaganda
weapon, becoming even mightier in its way than the Israeli Defense
Force. Certainly, Gentile guilt about the Holocaust has been a
significant factor in enabling Israel to get away with murder. Like
the charge of anti-Semitism, it has been ruthlessly exploited to
silence Israel’s critics. But for the Holocaust’s emotive effect,
the brutality Israel has meted out to the Palestinians would long
ago have established it as a moral pariah.
True, the Holocaust is inseparable from the story of Israel. Not
only did it precipitate mass Jewish immigration into Palestine, it
was also a truly formative influence on the Israeli sense of
nationhood. Mandatory remembrance of the Holocaust did much to forge
its collective identity, uniting even Jews with no connection with
the Nazi death camps.
Israelis have been outraged by Burg’s portrayal of Israel as
militarized state with more than a little in common with the Germany
of yore. Burg believes that just as Germans demonized Jews as the
enemy who must be defeated at all costs, so Israel has transformed
Arabs into personifications of absolute evil, an enduring threat to
the very existence of the Jewish people.
Of German descent, Burg is well equipped to grasp the contradictions
of the Israeli psyche. Israel has reconciled itself to Germany yet
finds itself incapable of forgiving the Arabs. The Jewish anger and
desire for revenge inspired by Germans have, Burg suggests, become
displaced onto the Palestinians, whom Israel savagely oppresses.
Central to Burg’s book is his discussion of the trial of Adolph
Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal who was arrested in Argentina in
1960 and subsequently tried in Jerusalem as one of the chief
architects of the “Final Solution”. Burg regards the trial as a
tragically missed opportunity. Israel could have set an example as a
state implacably opposed to all forms of tyranny and oppression and
affirmed its commitment to the principle of “never again” on behalf
not just of Jewish victims but of victims everywhere, irrespective
of their race, creed or colour. Instead, in Burg’s view, Israel made
far too much of Eichmann’s deeds as crimes against the Jewish people
rather than crimes against humanity.
The truth is that when it comes to acknowledging the sufferings of
others, Israel has an ignominious record. Witness the Jewish state’s
persistent support of Turkey in denying the historical reality of
the Armenian Holocaust. Witness, too, its failure to take a stand
over the genocide that was visited on the Tutsi of Rwanda in 1994.
It is an especial source of dismay to Burg that when, in the late
1990s, Serbia sought to purge Kosovo of Albanian Muslims, evoking
worldwide horror, Israel took the side of the Serbs. He believes
that the horrors Jews have known makes Israel’s moral dereliction
over such iniquities inexcusable.
Burg maintains that the commemorative trips young Israelis are
obliged to make to the Nazi death camps serve only to exacerbate the
Israeli fixation with the unique status of Jewish suffering. What he
would like to see is an educational program whereby groups of
Israeli students, including Jews and Arabs, visit Spain and learn
about the days when Islam and Judaism enjoyed a mutually beneficial
relationship.
Avraham Burg has great faith in the creative power of argument. His
book has already provoked much controversy and now that it has been
translated is certain to provoke more. At a time when crass,
catchpenny titles pour from the presses, it is that unusual thing: A
new book that matters.
—Arab News
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