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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it

Occupation magazine - Commentary Home page  back Print  Send To friend Red Rag column: Holocaust-denial, settler style By: Gideon Spiro 18 February 2015 (English translation 28 February 2015) Holocaust-denial, settler-style An outcry in Israel. A group calling itself the “Samaria Settlers’ Committee”, based in the Occupied Territories, has produced a video comparing the Left and human rights organizations in Israel to a bunch of Nazis, allies of the Nazi organ Der Stürmer, who receive their budgets from the worst of the antisemites with the objective of slandering Israel. [1] The gatekeepers immediately raised a hue and cry that the video is incitement to murder, that the lessons of the Rabin assassination have not been learned and that it is forbidden to compare anything to the Holocaust. Sorry, I do not share this view. The Holocaust was not a cosmic event in outer space but a political event here on our own planet Earth and we must learn from it and draw from it political conclusions, and the conclusions will never be homogenous. Comparisons should be made where the writer feels they are relevant, and we must hope that they will be based on reliable and provable facts. The words of retired Supreme Court Judge Edna Arbel, who has had some moments of enlightenment, are apt in this context: “It would not be appropriate to promulgate a general rule according to which certain oral or written statements have no place in the public discourse and the use of which is effectively forbidden. Such a rule in a democratic state cannot live alongside the value of freedom of expression.” She added that “a blanket ban on making any comparison or allusion to the Nazi regime and the Nazi ideology raises another difficulty, which the respondents mention in their submissions. The rise to power of the National-Socialist movement in Germany, the Nazi regime and the its ideology, the Jewish Holocaust and other events related to the period of the Second World War and the period that preceded it are all subjects that have highly significant historical social, political and other aspects. It is a phenomenon that has been – and we must hope that it will remain – unique.” (Civil Appeal 2572/04). Once and for all we must do away with the myth that Rabin was assassinated because an image of him in an SS uniform was displayed at right-wing demonstrations. That myth has taken root in Israel, but the truth is that Rabin was assassinated because influential rabbis issued a din rodef against him, which is a death-sentence. [2] The assassin translated their ruling into action. He pulled the trigger but it was not he who decided on the murder. The Israeli government, not of the Likud but of the Labour Party, decided to excuse the rabbinical murderers from standing trial, unlike the standard procedure where Palestinians are concerned. There, the whole cell is held responsible: the one who pulled the trigger, those who sent him, those who planned it, the driver and the imam who gave the authorization in religious law – all of them are charged with murder, convicted and sent to prison for life. The rabbis of the Occupied Territories received exemption from responsibility even though they were the predominant component in the murder cell. [3] Back to the video: the settlers are worried. They hear and read experts and academics, including experts on the history of Germany, pointing to lines of similarity and overlap between the Nazi ideology and that of the settlers. The uprooting of thousands of olive trees and the burning of mosques and holy books is essentially no different the Krystallnacht pogroms that were accompanied by burning synagogues, books and the plunder of Jewish property. In their distress the settlers decided that the human rights organizations and all their members and activists in Israel are “Nazi organizations”, allies of the Nazi German media flagship Der Stürmer. Nazi Germany thereby gets a whitewashing, for if human rights organizations like Physicians for Human Rights, which struggles for the right of all people everywhere to equal medical care, B’Tselem, which exposes human rights violations and war crimes, the Yesh Gvul movement, whose members refuse to serve in the army that rules over another people, the women of Machsom Watch, whose members act to protect the human dignity of the occupied population and prevent abuse of by the occupier – if those organizations and many others enjoy the support of Der Stürmer as the settlers claim, then they are presenting Nazi Germany in a new light: as a liberal and humane state that respects human rights activists. From there the path to Holocaust-denial is a short one, for it does not stand to reason that a tolerant state like Nazi Germany would commit genocide. That same twisted, some would say pathological, settler logic also applies to the issue of donations and grants from the European Union to human-rights organizations. The settler video calls the leaders of the European Union the biggest antisemites. The leaders of the European Union, which constitutes the main market for Israeli exports, which channels billions in economic aid to Israel, which supplies Israel with super-modern arms and bestows generous research grants on Israeli institutions of higher education, are condemned as the worst of the antisemites because a small trickle from those billions that flow to Israel filters down to human-rights organizations. This confirms what was already known: that the settlements are a hothouse for institutional madness. In the deranged reality that the settlers have created for themselves, the casino magnates and pimps who send vast sums to the settlers are the righteous of the world. The settler video is a stage in the terror campaign that is being conducted against human-rights activists with the support of the Netanyahu government. Our response should be to adopt the motto from Rabbi Nachman’s famous poem: not to be afraid at all, to continue to expose the dangers inherent in the settler movement and the government that supports it and to make the appropriate comparisons in the relevant contexts. In the medium or long run they will be overthrown, just as Nazi Germany was defeated, just as Franco’s Spain was brought down, just as the dictator Salazar’s fascist Portugal was laid low, as Apartheid in South Africa was defeated and the military dictators in South America fell one by one. Sooner or later – in any case before the coming of the Messiah – that will also be fate of the state of the settlers. It will be defeated and eliminated in any future solution, whether one state or two states. The reserves in the Holocaust Bank are depleting, and when the balance-sheet shows zero Israel will begin to receive the treatment it deserves as a recalcitrant state. Just have patience, my friends, hopefully accompanied by mobilization for the struggle, which will hasten the arrival of the turning-point. Medal inflation Operation “Solid Cliff” (called “Protective Edge” in English) was a conflict between the Israeli Goliath, armed with the most modern weapons, who invaded the territory of his neighbour and pounded it cruelly great from land, sea and air. Israel used everything except nuclear weapons. Facing Israel stood the Palestinian David, part army, part militia, armed by with primitive weapons. To its rear, two million hungry, unemployed and humiliated people. After fifty days in Gaza, with heavy bombardment of a civilian population that generated hundreds of thousands of refugees whose homes were blown up, and thousands of killed and wounded, mostly civilians, the Palestinian David was wounded but not subjugated or defeated. The operation was pointless because it did not solve the problems at the base of the conflict, above all the protracted siege of the Gaza Strip and its separation from the West Bank. So we must assume that it only is a matter of time until the shooting starts again. That operation will not be recorded as a brilliant success, and it will be stored in Israel’s cellar of shame. The army felt it was necessary to upgrade Solid Cliff from an operation to destroy Gaza to a war of heroism and so they handed out 53 medals. Medal-inflation. Fewer Chief-of-Staff medals were distributed in the 18 years of the First Lebanon War than in the fifty days of the operation. Pictures of medal-recipients were published in the press, as if they were national heroes. It was really pathetic. What would we say about giving a citation for distinguished service to a German soldier who participated in the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising? I am not speaking of the degree of justice on the respective sides – the Warsaw Ghetto and the Gaza Ghetto; but of the imbalance in armament that made the outcome clear at the outset. A regular army does not distribute medals in such situations, certainly not in such quantities. The real heroes are those who refused to participate in the operation. The refusers are a true solid cliff in the face of the moral flaccidity of the Israeli army of invasion. Translator’s notes 1. http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/1.643011 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodef 3. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/rabin-s-murderers-are-still- free-and-happy-1.394703 Translated from Hebrew for Occupation Magazine by George Malent Links to the latest articles in this section Three weeks into the Gaza War - a somber and sober assessment, with some historical perspectives Israelis, Palestinians, Gaza, Hamas - trying to preserve sanity Gush Shalom: The UN decision is a very necessary message to Israel’s extreme right-wing government