Pierre Puchot: Why Holocaust Denial Is on the Rise in the Arab World
[Translation: Truthout French Language Editor Leslie Thatcher.]
What pushes Arabs to deny the existence of the Holocaust? How and why does Israel continue to instrumentalize the memory of the destruction of European Jewry? What was the attitude of Arab intellectuals during the Second World War? Why does Ahmadinejad incessantly brandish the denial weapon while Hamas and Hezbollah turn away from it? Mediapart published an exclusive extract from the book,"Les Arabes et la Shoah" [Arabs and the Holocaust] (éditions Actes Sud/Sindbad, 2009), that came out Wednesday, October 14.
The result of an unprecedented labor, the work of political scientist Gilbert Achcar - professor at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) - reviews over a century of history from the birth of Zionism to last winter's Israeli offensive against Gaza. Although he gives prominence to the political impasse constituted by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he indicates"new links" that today exist between Jews and Arabs. An Interview.
Gilbert Achcar, your book's subtitle is:"The Israeli-Arab War of Narratives." What do you mean?
Gilbert Achcar: It's about the war that opposes two entirely symmetrical visions of the origins of the conflict. Specifically, I refer here to the notion of"narrative" as the recitation of history as developed by post-modernism. The Israeli narrative describes an Israel beside the"Biblical rights" invoked by religious Zionists. And its justification by European anti-Semitism is extended to Arabs, who are presented as accomplices to this paroxysm of anti-Semitism that was Nazism - which would legitimate the birth of the State of Israel on lands conquered from the population of Arab descent. That's why the Israeli narrative insists to such a degree on this character, blown up out of all proportion, who became the ex-grand mufti of Jerusalem.
On the Arab side, the most rational narrative - later we'll mention the denialist escalations that are on the rise at present - may perhaps be summarized in these terms,"We had nothing to do with the Shoah. Anti-Semitism is not an established tradition for us, but a European phenomenon. Zionism is a colonial movement that really took off in Palestine under the British colonial mandate, even though there were earlier indications. In consequence, it's a colonial implantation in the Arab world, on the model of what was seen in South Africa and elsewhere." It's the war between these two narratives that I explore in this book.
Is there a dominant Arab reading of the Shoah? In what respects is it specific and how does it differ from those in Europe or the United States?
There's not a single Arab interpretation of the Shoah, just as there isn't a single European reading either, even though there's certainly more homogeneity in the perception of the Holocaust in Europe. However, even that is recent, since, as you know, the Shoah was not a very current theme in European news and education during the two decades that followed the end of the Second World War.
In the Arab world, the situation is far more diversified. That is chiefly the result of the existence of a great variety of political regimes in the Arab countries, with very different ideological legitimatizations. Similarly, very diverse - and even broadly antithetical - ideological currents traverse Arab public opinion.
In these last few years, there has been an escalation in the brutality of Israeli military operations - which have gone from being wars that Israel could present as defensive to wars that could no longer be presented that way at all - beginning with the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. That has been accompanied by an intensification of hatred in the Israeli-Arab conflict, notably because of the fate reserved for the Palestinians of the territories occupied since 1967.
In the face of growing criticism of Israel, including in the West, since 1982 especially, we have seen that state systematically resort to instrumentalization of the memory of the Shoah, beginning no later than the Eichmann trial in 1960. And that instrumentalization arouses, on the"opposing side," a knee-jerk reaction that sometimes goes so far as to deny the Holocaust. The best indicator of this reactive quality is the fact that the Arab population which has received the widest education on the memory of the Shoah, the population of Arab citizens of Israel, has been prone to an absolutely striking explosion of denial these last few years.
To my mind, that very clearly illustrates the fact that denial in these cases corresponds more to a"gut reaction" out of political rancor, than to a true denial of the Shoah as is seen in Europe or the United States, where the deniers spend their time devising historical theories that don't stand up to refute the existence of the gas chambers, etc.
Another indication of this difference is that within the Arab world where denial is riding high, there's not a single author who has produced anything original on that theme. All the Arab deniers do is pick up theories produced in the West.
The political instrumentalization of denial as formulated by Ahmadinejad today was not used before in the Arab world, in the time of Nasser, for example. What does this development tell us?
The Islamic fundamentalism that has developed over the most recent decades, from the perspective of the Israeli-Arab conflict, carries an essentialist vision, even though it is not anti-Semitic in the strict racial sense of the term. It's a vision that picks up the anti-Judaism that may be found in the Abrahamic religions that followed Judaism, such as Christianity and Islam. Those elements present in Islam are going to be pointed out to facilitate a convergence between this ideologically extreme current and Western denial...
... What I understand from your book is that Holocaust denial has become a political instrument per se in the Middle East, whether one chooses to use it or not. How was this instrument integral to the political foundation of the Palestinian movement, especially with respect to the PLO?
The PLO, ever since the armed Palestinian organizations got the upper hand within it after 1967, very quickly came to understand that anti-Semitic discourse is bad in itself and altogether contrary to the interests of the struggle of the Palestinian people. Hence the insistence on the distinction to be made between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, which was the issue in a political battle within the Palestinian movement...
Read entire article at Truthout
What pushes Arabs to deny the existence of the Holocaust? How and why does Israel continue to instrumentalize the memory of the destruction of European Jewry? What was the attitude of Arab intellectuals during the Second World War? Why does Ahmadinejad incessantly brandish the denial weapon while Hamas and Hezbollah turn away from it? Mediapart published an exclusive extract from the book,"Les Arabes et la Shoah" [Arabs and the Holocaust] (éditions Actes Sud/Sindbad, 2009), that came out Wednesday, October 14.
The result of an unprecedented labor, the work of political scientist Gilbert Achcar - professor at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) - reviews over a century of history from the birth of Zionism to last winter's Israeli offensive against Gaza. Although he gives prominence to the political impasse constituted by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he indicates"new links" that today exist between Jews and Arabs. An Interview.
Gilbert Achcar, your book's subtitle is:"The Israeli-Arab War of Narratives." What do you mean?
Gilbert Achcar: It's about the war that opposes two entirely symmetrical visions of the origins of the conflict. Specifically, I refer here to the notion of"narrative" as the recitation of history as developed by post-modernism. The Israeli narrative describes an Israel beside the"Biblical rights" invoked by religious Zionists. And its justification by European anti-Semitism is extended to Arabs, who are presented as accomplices to this paroxysm of anti-Semitism that was Nazism - which would legitimate the birth of the State of Israel on lands conquered from the population of Arab descent. That's why the Israeli narrative insists to such a degree on this character, blown up out of all proportion, who became the ex-grand mufti of Jerusalem.
On the Arab side, the most rational narrative - later we'll mention the denialist escalations that are on the rise at present - may perhaps be summarized in these terms,"We had nothing to do with the Shoah. Anti-Semitism is not an established tradition for us, but a European phenomenon. Zionism is a colonial movement that really took off in Palestine under the British colonial mandate, even though there were earlier indications. In consequence, it's a colonial implantation in the Arab world, on the model of what was seen in South Africa and elsewhere." It's the war between these two narratives that I explore in this book.
Is there a dominant Arab reading of the Shoah? In what respects is it specific and how does it differ from those in Europe or the United States?
There's not a single Arab interpretation of the Shoah, just as there isn't a single European reading either, even though there's certainly more homogeneity in the perception of the Holocaust in Europe. However, even that is recent, since, as you know, the Shoah was not a very current theme in European news and education during the two decades that followed the end of the Second World War.
In the Arab world, the situation is far more diversified. That is chiefly the result of the existence of a great variety of political regimes in the Arab countries, with very different ideological legitimatizations. Similarly, very diverse - and even broadly antithetical - ideological currents traverse Arab public opinion.
In these last few years, there has been an escalation in the brutality of Israeli military operations - which have gone from being wars that Israel could present as defensive to wars that could no longer be presented that way at all - beginning with the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. That has been accompanied by an intensification of hatred in the Israeli-Arab conflict, notably because of the fate reserved for the Palestinians of the territories occupied since 1967.
In the face of growing criticism of Israel, including in the West, since 1982 especially, we have seen that state systematically resort to instrumentalization of the memory of the Shoah, beginning no later than the Eichmann trial in 1960. And that instrumentalization arouses, on the"opposing side," a knee-jerk reaction that sometimes goes so far as to deny the Holocaust. The best indicator of this reactive quality is the fact that the Arab population which has received the widest education on the memory of the Shoah, the population of Arab citizens of Israel, has been prone to an absolutely striking explosion of denial these last few years.
To my mind, that very clearly illustrates the fact that denial in these cases corresponds more to a"gut reaction" out of political rancor, than to a true denial of the Shoah as is seen in Europe or the United States, where the deniers spend their time devising historical theories that don't stand up to refute the existence of the gas chambers, etc.
Another indication of this difference is that within the Arab world where denial is riding high, there's not a single author who has produced anything original on that theme. All the Arab deniers do is pick up theories produced in the West.
The political instrumentalization of denial as formulated by Ahmadinejad today was not used before in the Arab world, in the time of Nasser, for example. What does this development tell us?
The Islamic fundamentalism that has developed over the most recent decades, from the perspective of the Israeli-Arab conflict, carries an essentialist vision, even though it is not anti-Semitic in the strict racial sense of the term. It's a vision that picks up the anti-Judaism that may be found in the Abrahamic religions that followed Judaism, such as Christianity and Islam. Those elements present in Islam are going to be pointed out to facilitate a convergence between this ideologically extreme current and Western denial...
... What I understand from your book is that Holocaust denial has become a political instrument per se in the Middle East, whether one chooses to use it or not. How was this instrument integral to the political foundation of the Palestinian movement, especially with respect to the PLO?
The PLO, ever since the armed Palestinian organizations got the upper hand within it after 1967, very quickly came to understand that anti-Semitic discourse is bad in itself and altogether contrary to the interests of the struggle of the Palestinian people. Hence the insistence on the distinction to be made between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, which was the issue in a political battle within the Palestinian movement...