Question: which Hamas leader wrote the following this past week?
… the full lunacy and vileness of this latest Israeli war crime is becoming clear to all who can read. Israeli propaganda has worked overtime, based on the kidnapping of the activists, isolating them from the whole world, confiscating all their material evidence, on top of the brutalities of maiming and murdering many of them. This meant that for the last few days, only the the voice of Israeli propaganda was available to the international media. Fictional narratives, more complex than most Hollywood scripts, were woven and reinforced by what must be the largest propaganda machine anywhere.
Of course, this matter [sic] little now. The facts are now coming out, and many inquiries will be conducted and will establish the full horror of this murderous piracy. The world will not be fooled by this anymore…
The resolution of this conflict will only be reached by the annulling Zionism and its racism, its military and ‘civil’ racist machineries, the total removal of all settler communities, and the return of Palestinian refugees, as well as the payment of full compensation to all those who were hurt by the Zionist enterprise over the last few decades.
Give up?
Haim Bresheeth
No Hamas leader, not even a Turkish Hamas supporter! It was an Israeli Jew and a child of Holocaust survivors, Professor Haim Bresheeth (h/t, Israel Academia Monitor), Chair of Media and Cultural Studies, Deputy Dean of School, University of East London, formerly of Sapir College in the Western Negev — not far from Sderot, a favorite Hamas target. Maybe the din of Qassams landing addled his brain (in case you think he makes sense, the truth about the boarding of the Mavi Marmara is here, here and here).
Bresheeth is the author of several books, including one actually titled “Holocaust for Beginners,” (also translated into Turkish and Croatian!) and numerous articles. Here is another example of his writing, from in article in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram (2006):
A sorry tale of collusion emerges from almost every leading newspaper, every hour of quality radio, every current affairs television programme. It is well known that many Jews front numerous media outlets and discourse on the continued Middle Eastern saga of pain, violence and propaganda, yet no one seems to think this strange. There are no Arabs, or even influential Muslims, in similar positions in the British or American media. That in itself is worrying, but would have been less so if we had examples of a wide variety of positions taken by influential Jews — if some were, for example, doing better than mouthing Israeli propaganda, and imaginatively representing the Palestinian, Arab or Muslim perspective, or being sometimes critical of Israel’s positions, especially when they are so obviously not just immoral, but counter- productive. That day has not yet come, it seems.
So the Jews control the media, there are no anti-Israel Jews among Jewish news personalities, and there are no Arab or Muslim commentators heard? The mind boggles.
In 2002, after literally hundreds of Israelis were killed in a series of bloody suicide bombings which followed Arafat’s rejection of the Camp David peace proposals — it seemed at times that every few days there was a new atrocity, 20 or 30 dead — Israel embarked on Operation Defensive Shield, in which the IDF entered the Palestinian-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria and rooted out the terrorists. One of the most effective counter-terrorist operations ever, it ended the string of bloody attacks.
Naturally, there were howls of protest and condemnation from Palestinians and their supporters who saw their best weapon taken from them. Bresheeth did his part, comparing Israel’s self-defense to Nazi genocide in an article called “The ghetto is calling“:
At this time Jews who remember the Holocaust should stand up and be counted. They should clearly say that they are totally against Israeli occupation and totally for liberation of the Palestinians from the Israeli yolk [sic]. If the future life of people in the region is dear to them, they should help Israel to free itself from the diseased and debilitating cycle of brutality that they have plunged themselves and the Palestinians into. They should clarify that Israel has not got them on its side, and is not acting in their name. It is not the Palestinians who need to be under pressure after all these years of atrocities, but the short-sightedness of the Israeli public, and its refusal to face reality.
What must come now are sanctions of every kind, withdrawal of help and cooperation from Israeli organisations, up to the point of sending an international force into the region to force the evacuation of the territories. The time has come to take a stand.
If, despite the pressing need to force an end to the violence by ending the occupation, nothing will be done — well, we know well enough what will follow. We have seen it time and again on our screens in the former Yugoslavia. Do we want to wait until all is lost? Our Palestinian friends are calling out to us. Please, let us not abandon them as European society of the 1940s abandoned my own family to their fate.
But that’s nothing. Bresheeth wrote an article in 1989, which now appears on the viciously antisemitic “Radio Islam” web site, called “Zionism and the Holocaust.” In it, he argues that German Zionists colluded with the Nazis, that “Zionism agrees with the basic tenet of anti-Semitism, namely that Jews cannot live with non-Jews,” and that Zionists helped the Germans exterminate the Hungarian Jews. This one, and the site that it appears on, is so vile that I won’t link to it. Google it if you must.
Anti-Israel Jews aren’t news, especially when they are Israeli academics. But Haim Bresheeth is notable because he is also an antisemite, and because the rubbish that he writes is far out even for its genre.
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