Truthout Editorial: Holocaust Still a Political Football
Matthew Rothschild and I both thought of Edward Said when we read about two Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council insisting that Gaza's schools should not teach the history of the Nazi Holocaust. Cleric Yunis al-Astal said this would be "marketing a lie" and a "war crime." Jamila al-Shanti commented, "Talk about the Holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage, and religion."
I knew that Said would have spoken out in protest. Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, proved it with these pertinent words written by Said, the late Palestinian luminary who taught for many years at Columbia University: "The history of the modern Arab world ... is disfigured by a whole series outmoded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that the Jews never suffered and that holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the Elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much, far too much currency."
"This insistence by Hamas on denying the reality of the Holocaust is as reprehensible as it is astonishing," Rothschild added. "And it will only harden the opposition in Israel to reaching any true peace with the Palestinians."
Such comments will no doubt turn some Israelis more firmly against any rapprochement with their Palestinian neighbors. They are all too eager to assume that the words represent the thinking of all Palestinians, forgetting that there are plenty who would agree with Said.
And Rothschild is surely right that Holocaust denial is reprehensible. But are the words of these Gazan leaders so astonishing? Let's take a closer look at the two individuals who spoke them.
Last year, the same Yunis al-Astal declared: "Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered ... Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam." Rome would then become "an advanced post for the Islamic conquests," he predicted, "which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas."
Which just proves that Gaza is not much different than the good ol' USA, where religious fanatics may be strange birds, but certainly not rare birds. In other words, should we take anything this guy says seriously? I'll bet that serious Gazan political leaders don't.
Jamila al-Shanti is another case altogether. She is the most senior Hamas woman in the Palestinian Legislative Council and chair of its Women Affairs Committee. In a 2007 interview, she advocated "relentless efforts to guarantee women's rights," including "instruct[ing] women to reject violence against them.... This emanates from our understanding of the true Islam. We are totally against violence and repression of women's freedoms," though she noted sadly that too many Palestinian men still don't get it.
Oh, yes. Two more things about Jamila al-Shanti. She is the widow of the famed Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who was assassinated by Israeli missile attack in 2004, leaving their six children fatherless. And two years later, the Israelis used the same crude method to try to kill al-Shanti herself. Though she survived, her sister-in-law was killed, leaving al-Shanti's eight nieces and nephews motherless. Might that make the woman more than a bit enraged?
But with so many justifiably angry words that Gazans can aim at Israel, why would an otherwise intelligent and enlightened woman choose the foolishness of denying education about the Holocaust. Why would anyone turn the horrors of human suffering on an unimaginable scale into a political football?
That's a good question to ask the Israelis. In this, as in so much else, Palestinians are promoting their own nationalism using tactics they've learned from their enemy. A recent blog by Reuven Greenvald, on the web site of the premier Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, notes that "since 1948 [when Israeli was created], Israel has been telling us that it is the safe haven for Jews around the world with video montages for that claim beginning with Shoah [Holocaust] refugees. Likewise, does any Jewish trip to Israel skip a visit to [the Holocaust memorial] Yad Vashem? Does Israel ever host a visiting dignitary and not include Yad Vashem?"...
... When all of the world's nations assembled in 1948 to figure out what human rights ought to be affirmed in the face of the Nazi horrors, they included a guarantee of medical care for every human being, regardless of employment status, income or preexisting condition. Who knew? Very few Americans. Our leaders, our educators and our mass media have worked hard for decades to keep it that way (though they are quick enough to cite the Declaration's promise that "everyone has the right to own property ... No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property"). So the Holocaust still echoes in our most contemporary political debates, here at home as well as in the Middle East.
It would surely have been better if the victims of the Holocaust, and the survivors and all their loved ones had been left to rest in whatever peace they could find. But historical events of such magnitude never work that way. They always become political footballs. The best we can do is to follow the example of Edward Said, Archbishop Tutu and the authors of the Declaration of Human Rights and see to it that the memory of the Holocaust enters the political playing field in ways that raise, not lower, the moral level of our world.
Read entire article at Truthout
I knew that Said would have spoken out in protest. Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, proved it with these pertinent words written by Said, the late Palestinian luminary who taught for many years at Columbia University: "The history of the modern Arab world ... is disfigured by a whole series outmoded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that the Jews never suffered and that holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the Elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much, far too much currency."
"This insistence by Hamas on denying the reality of the Holocaust is as reprehensible as it is astonishing," Rothschild added. "And it will only harden the opposition in Israel to reaching any true peace with the Palestinians."
Such comments will no doubt turn some Israelis more firmly against any rapprochement with their Palestinian neighbors. They are all too eager to assume that the words represent the thinking of all Palestinians, forgetting that there are plenty who would agree with Said.
And Rothschild is surely right that Holocaust denial is reprehensible. But are the words of these Gazan leaders so astonishing? Let's take a closer look at the two individuals who spoke them.
Last year, the same Yunis al-Astal declared: "Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered ... Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam." Rome would then become "an advanced post for the Islamic conquests," he predicted, "which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas."
Which just proves that Gaza is not much different than the good ol' USA, where religious fanatics may be strange birds, but certainly not rare birds. In other words, should we take anything this guy says seriously? I'll bet that serious Gazan political leaders don't.
Jamila al-Shanti is another case altogether. She is the most senior Hamas woman in the Palestinian Legislative Council and chair of its Women Affairs Committee. In a 2007 interview, she advocated "relentless efforts to guarantee women's rights," including "instruct[ing] women to reject violence against them.... This emanates from our understanding of the true Islam. We are totally against violence and repression of women's freedoms," though she noted sadly that too many Palestinian men still don't get it.
Oh, yes. Two more things about Jamila al-Shanti. She is the widow of the famed Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who was assassinated by Israeli missile attack in 2004, leaving their six children fatherless. And two years later, the Israelis used the same crude method to try to kill al-Shanti herself. Though she survived, her sister-in-law was killed, leaving al-Shanti's eight nieces and nephews motherless. Might that make the woman more than a bit enraged?
But with so many justifiably angry words that Gazans can aim at Israel, why would an otherwise intelligent and enlightened woman choose the foolishness of denying education about the Holocaust. Why would anyone turn the horrors of human suffering on an unimaginable scale into a political football?
That's a good question to ask the Israelis. In this, as in so much else, Palestinians are promoting their own nationalism using tactics they've learned from their enemy. A recent blog by Reuven Greenvald, on the web site of the premier Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, notes that "since 1948 [when Israeli was created], Israel has been telling us that it is the safe haven for Jews around the world with video montages for that claim beginning with Shoah [Holocaust] refugees. Likewise, does any Jewish trip to Israel skip a visit to [the Holocaust memorial] Yad Vashem? Does Israel ever host a visiting dignitary and not include Yad Vashem?"...
... When all of the world's nations assembled in 1948 to figure out what human rights ought to be affirmed in the face of the Nazi horrors, they included a guarantee of medical care for every human being, regardless of employment status, income or preexisting condition. Who knew? Very few Americans. Our leaders, our educators and our mass media have worked hard for decades to keep it that way (though they are quick enough to cite the Declaration's promise that "everyone has the right to own property ... No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property"). So the Holocaust still echoes in our most contemporary political debates, here at home as well as in the Middle East.
It would surely have been better if the victims of the Holocaust, and the survivors and all their loved ones had been left to rest in whatever peace they could find. But historical events of such magnitude never work that way. They always become political footballs. The best we can do is to follow the example of Edward Said, Archbishop Tutu and the authors of the Declaration of Human Rights and see to it that the memory of the Holocaust enters the political playing field in ways that raise, not lower, the moral level of our world.