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Why does Ahmadinejad care about the Holocaust?

Possibly lots of reasons, but one of them is to make a poor argument against Israel.

“Granted this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?” he said…

Ahmadinejad said he simply wanted more research on the Holocaust, which he said was abused as a justification for Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians.

“Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?” Ahmadinejad asked. — Jerusalem Post report of his Columbia University speech

The Holocaust actually has little to do with the Palestinians, unless you are talking about the Palestinian Nazi, Haj Amin al-Husseini. But the idea that Israel was created as a result of the Holocaust is nonsense.

By 1939 the Zionists had put all of the institutions of the Jewish state in place. The only thing that remained was to kick out the British. And there’s no doubt that would have happened, with or without the Holocaust. Indeed, many of the six million would probably have ended up in Israel instead of the smokestacks of Auschwitz.

The Palestinians are paying the price, actually, of some choices made by their leaders and friends.

• They are paying for the choice made by al-Husseini to try to drive the Jews out of Palestine and, when this failed, to ally himself with Hitler.

• They are paying for the choice made by the Arab nations to try to destroy Israel in 1948.

• They are paying — a very high price — for the choice made by the Arab nations to not try to solve the refugee problem, but rather to exacerbate it in order to use it against Israel.

• They are paying the price for Nasser’s arrogance and desire to commit genocide in 1967.

• They are paying the price for almost everything ever done by Yasser Arafat.

• And now they are paying for electing a Hamas-dominated Palestinian authority.

Technorati Tags: Ahmadinejad, Israel, Palestinians, Holocaust

by Vic Rosenthal

Operation Defensive Shield (March 29 – May 3, 2002) was carried out in response to a series of catastrophic terror attacks against Israelis. Several IDF soldiers who took part are now suing Israeli Arab filmmaker Mohammed Bakri for libeling them in his film “Jenin, Jenin”:

During the fighting in Jenin, Palestinian spokesmen, human rights organizations and foreign journalists accused Israel of conducting a civilian massacre. In the end, it emerged, according to Israeli figures, that 52 Palestinians were killed in the refugee camp, including 38 armed fighters and 14 civilians. Twenty-three IDF soldiers died in the fighting.

Basing itself mainly on interviews with Palestinians in the refugee camp after the fighting ended, but also on film clips, Bakri portrayed Israeli troops as committing a series of war crimes. Although he described the film as a documentary, he did not interview Israeli officials or give them an opportunity to refute the allegations contained in the film. — Jerusalem Post

The film was full of false testimonies, dishonestly edited and faked footage, allegations of events that never happened, and so forth. Like the ‘shooting’ of Mohammed al-Dura, “Jenin, Jenin” became a focal point of worldwide condemnation and fury at the “brutal massacre” that in fact did not take place.

Even after the UN investigated and agreed that the Israeli accounts of what took place were accurate, the blood libel did not go away. And “Jenin, Jenin” is still shown regularly around the world (it’s been shown several times here in Fresno, by CSU Fresno administrator Dr. Vida Samiian).

Here’s my personal connection: sometime after the film came out (and long after the facts about what actually happened in Jenin were known), my daughter met Bakri at a party in Tel Aviv. Bakri, an Israeli citizen who speaks perfect Hebrew, was asked if he actually believed that the his film was a true depiction of what had taken place.

His answer was something like this (unfortunately I have no direct quotation):

Yes, it is true. I’m an artist, not a historian, and the truth is that Israel is crushing my people and that’s what I depicted.

So, in perfect post-modern fashion, truth is whatever serves the artist’s political purposes. I will await the outcome of the trial with great interest.

Technorati Tags: Bakri, Jenin, Israel, IDF

The teenage daughter of a friend of mine recently returned from a 6-week trip to Israel. She went with a group of American and Israeli Jewish kids, of various backgrounds — secular, liberal, and orthodox. They traveled all over the country and met all kinds of people, including settlers, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians.

Someone asked her “if there is one thing that you learned on this trip that you would like to tell us about, what was it?”

She said something like this: “Beforehand, I thought that all we had to do to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was to get the two sides to understand each other’s point of view. Now I see that it’s much harder than that — it goes very, very deep”.

Indeed. This young woman has been active in interfaith activities. I’m sure that the emphasis was on understanding, listening to the other side’s point of view, and getting to know each other as individuals, not as stereotypes.

And probably what she heard was that if it were possible to prevent “a few extremists on both sides” from stirring up hatred and violence, the conflict could be solved by reasonable people talking, listening, and compromising.

But, as she found out, it’s not that easy. There are several kinds of basic disagreements between Israelis and Palestinians that can’t be settled this way. Here are just a few of many that inform the conflict:

• Disagreements about what happened in the past. Did the Zionists dispossess Arabs? Did the Arabs commit pogroms against the pre-state yishuv? Did the Palestinians and the Arab Nations attack the Jewish State in 1947-48 or did the Jews try to drive the Palestinians out? Why did the Palestinian refugees flee? Why did the Jews flee from Arab countries at the same time? What was Nasser’s true intent in 1967? Why did Oslo fail? Were most of the Lebanese casualties of the 2006 war civilians or Hezbollah soldiers? How many were there, anyway? Who shot Mohammad Dura (if anyone)?

• Disagreements about what is happening now. Are Palestinians in Gaza suffering from the international boycott of Hamas, or is Hamas getting plenty of aid and using it for a military buildup? Does Fatah represent anyone other than the US? Is Palestinian terrorism justified resistance to illegal occupation, or aggressive warfare against a legitimate state?

• Disagreements about intentions. Is Israel building the security fence primarily to keep out terrorists or to steal land? Does Fatah (assuming that it represents anyone) really intend to abide by a two-state peace treaty, or would they consider a Palestinian state in the territories merely a stepping stone to the conquest of Israel?

And the most difficult kind of disagreement of all,

• Disagreements about principles and ideology. Can Muslims live in a Jewish state? Can a Jewish state also be democratic? Can there be a Jewish state in the Middle East at all? Do Jews have a historic right to live in Judea and Samaria? Should the 1929 Hebron pogrom or the 1948 ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem be allowed to stand? Who must have authority over the Temple Mount? What should be the rights, if any, of descendants of refugees?

None of this is easy, and it is all connected, with the historical narratives serving as justification for today’s ideology. And there is one whole additional dimension of the conflict, which actually has little to do with Israelis and Palestinians:

• The meddling of outside interests. What are the goals of Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the US, the EU, Egypt, Syria, etc.? And what do they all expect to get out of the conflict?

Technorati Tags: Israeli-Palestinian conflict