The Holocaust: An Indispensable Component for Palestinian Liberation

When Benjamin Netanyahu demands of Palestinians that they must accept Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state”, he’s telling us something. He’s telling us where the Zionist argument is weakest. Jewish Zionists like Rabbi Rob Dobrusin echo the PM’s words and Jewish so-called anti-Zionists like Josh Ruebner, do their best to obfuscate the issue. The question loom large: Does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state?

Four answers are always offered:

1. God gave the Jews the land
2. The Balfour Declaration
3. The 1947 UN Partition Plan
4. The Holocaust

Think we’re joking? Here’s one of many conversations this writer has had with Jewish activists, in this case an ACLU fund raiser:

Me: I’d like to know if the ACLU supports Israel’s claimed right to exist as a Jewish state?
Fund Raiser: Of course we do
Me: That’s very disappointing to me. By what right does Israel claim?
FR: What about the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust?
Me: I can assure you that 6 million Jews did not die in the Second World War
FR: <click>

Space limitations require our responses to three of the answers be short. For #1, our biblical friends can explain to us why this is a misreading of prophecy, and we non-biblicals can only shake our heads at a God who condones the use of violence against people. #2: Britain had no right to give away another peoples’ land. #3: UN Resolution 181 never went to the Security Council for a vote; ergo no force of law ever said that the UN “created” Israel.

Guess what that leaves? Yep, the forbidden H-word. The ol’ briar patch where Zionists both left and right, threaten to throw those who deign enter this hallowed ground. Listen to Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, speaking at the “Israel’s Influence” conference March 18:

“… Israel would have never been established without the Holocaust”

Or listen to former American-Israeli PM =Golda Meir= speaking to then MK Shulamit Aloni:

“After the Holocaust, Jews are allowed to do anything.”

Are they? Are Jews really allowed to bludgeon Palestinians, dominate the US, brandish its hegemony over the Middle East (if not the world), and use this historical event to silence criticism? Or will we activists educate ourselves about the facts and have the strength to separate historical event from religious dogma? At least to ask questions like: If Elie Wiesel – the “High Priest of the Holocaust” – was correct in his description of Nazis as being the most evil force on earth, why did he and his father elect to evacuate Buchenwald with these monsters, rather than wait to be liberated by the advancing Soviets? Why doesn’t Elie even mention the existence of homicidal gas chambers in his fabled novel “Night”?

These two questions – given the courage to ask them – are but a mere tip of an iceberg that begs our attention. Spend a week with “The Fate of Jews in German Hands” by Joel S.A. Hayward*, or a day with “Debating the Holocaust” by Tom Dalton, and you might come away shocked. This writer did.

Or spend no time but just consider the fact that a dozen “Western” countries lock up historians and scientists like David Irving and Germar Rudolf for the mere crime of researching The Holocaust as an historical event. Could we claim the earth to be flat or the moon to be made of green cheese and expect such treatment? Why not? Who’s in charge?

In the balance lies the liberation of Palestine – and perhaps the liberation of America as well. To paraphrase Frederick Douglass “Jewish Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

• We note that Professor Hayward has portrayed internet copies of his thesis as “altered and unreliable”, but the University of Canterbury holds the only approved copy in Christchurch, New Zealand. This writer read the copy by Gengis Khan Publishing House a few years back and found its contents – 214 pages, 967 footnotes, 6 appendixes – valuable.

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Henry Herskovitz
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends
Remember Deir Yassin