Dissident Voice
March 13 2010
Truth, History, and Integrity
by Gilad Atzmon / March 13th, 2010
Back in 2007 the notorious American Jewish right-wing organization,
the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) announced that it recognised the
events in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred as
`genocide.’ The ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, insisted that
he made the decision after discussing the matter with `historians’.
For some reason he failed to mention who the historians were, nor did
he refer to their credibility or field of scholarship. However, Foxman
also consulted with one holocaust survivor who supported the decision.
It was Elie Wiesel, not known for being a leading world expert on the
Armenian ordeal.
The idea of a Zionist organization being genuinely concerned, or even
slightly moved, by other people’s suffering could truly be a
monumental transforming moment in Jewish history. However, this week
we learned that the ADL is once again engaged in the dilemma of
Armenian suffering. It is not convinced anymore that the Armenians
suffered that much. It is now lobbying the American congress not to
recognize the killings of Armenians as `genocide. This week saw the
ADL speaking out against Congressional acknowledgment of the Armenian
Genocide, and is, instead, advocating Turkey’s call for a historical
commission to study the events.’
How is it that an event that took place a century ago is causing such
a furor? One day it is generally classified as `genocide’, the next,
it is demoted to an ordinary instance of one man killing another. Was
it an `historical document’ that, out of nowhere, popped out on Abe
Foxman’s desk? Are there some new factual revelations that led to such
a dramatic historical shift? l don’t think so.
The ADL’s behaviour is a glimpse into the notion of Jewish history and
the Jewish understanding of the past. For the nationalist and
political Jew, history is a pragmatic tale, it is an elastic account.
It is foreign to any scientific or academic method. Jewish history
transcends itself beyond factuality, truthfulness or correspondence
rules with any given vision of reality. It also repels integrity or
ethics. It by far prefers total submission, instead of creative and
critical thinking. Jewish history is a phantasmic tale that is there
to make the Jews happy and the Goyim behave themselves. It is there to
serve the interests of one tribe and that tribe only. In practice,
from a Jewish perspective, the decision whether there was an Armenian
genocide or not is subject to Jewish interests: is it good for the
Jews or is it good for Israel.
Interestingly enough, history is not a particularly `Jewish thing’. It
is an established fact that not a single Jewish historical text has
been written between the 1st century (Josephus Flavius) and early 19th
century (Isaak Markus Jost). For almost 2 thousand years Jews were not
interested in their own or anyone else’s past, at least not enough to
chronicle it. As a matter of convenience, an adequate scrutiny of the
past was never a primary concern within the Rabbinical tradition. One
of the reasons is probably that there was no need for such a
methodical effort. For the Jew who lived during ancient times and the
Middle Ages, there was enough in the Bible to answer the most relevant
questions to do with day-to-day life, Jewish meaning and fate. As
Israeli historian Shlomo Sand puts it, `a secular chronological time
was foreign to the `Diaspora time’ that was shaped by the anticipation
for the coming of the Messiah.’
However, in the mid 19th century, in the light of secularisation,
urbanisation, emancipation and due to the decreasing authority of the
Rabbinical leaders, an emerging need of an alternative cause rose
amongst the awakening European Jews. All of a sudden, the emancipated
Jew had to decide who he was and where he came from. He also started
to speculate what his role might be within the rapidly opening Western
society.
This is where Jewish history in its modern form was invented. This is
also where Judaism was transformed from a world religion into a `land
registry’ with some clearly devastating racially orientated and
expansionist implications. As we know, Shlomo Sand’s account of the
`Jewish Nation’ as a fictional invention is yet to be challenged
academically. However, the dismissal of factuality or commitment to
truthfulness is actually symptomatic of any form of contemporary
Jewish collective ideology and identity politics. The ADL’s treatment
of the Armenian topic is just one example. The Zionist’s dismissal of
a Palestinian past and heritage is just another example. But in fact
any Jewish collective vision of the past is inherently Judeo-centric
and oblivious to any academic or scientific procedure.
When I Was Young
When I was young and naïve I regarded history as a serious academic
matter. As I understood it, history had something to do with truth
seeking, documents, chronology and facts. I was convinced that history
aimed to convey a sensible account of the past based on methodical
research. I also believed that it was premised on the assumption that
understanding the past may throw some light over our present and even
help us to shape a prospect of a better future. I grew up in the
Jewish state and it took me quite a while to understand that the
Jewish historical narrative is very different. In the Jewish
intellectual ghetto, one decides what the future ought to be, then one
constructs `a past’ accordingly. Interestingly enough, this exact
method is also prevalent amongst Marxists. They shape the past so it
fits nicely into their vision of the future. As the old Russian joke
says, `when the facts do not conform with the Marxist ideology, the
Communist social scientists amend the facts (rather than revise the
theory)’.
When I was young, I didn’t think that history was a matter of
political decisions or agreements between a rabid Zionist lobby and
its favorite holocaust survivor. I regarded historians as scholars who
engaged in adequate research following some strict procedures. When I
was young I even considered becoming an historian.
When I was young and naive I was also somehow convinced that what they
told us about our `collective’ Jewish past really happened. I believed
it all, the Kingdom of David, Massada, and then the Holocaust: the
soap, the lampshade,((During WWII and after it was widely believed
that soaps and lampshades were being mass produced from the bodies of
Jewish victims. In recent years the Israeli Holocaust museum admitted
that there was no truth in any of those accusations.)) the death
march, the six million.
As it happened, it took me many years to understand that the
Holocaust, the core belief of the contemporary Jewish faith, was not
at all an historical narrative for historical narratives do not need
the protection of the law and politicians. It took me years to grasp
that my great-grandmother wasn’t made into a `soap’ or a `lampshade’.1
She probably perished out of exhaustion, typhus or maybe even by mass
shooting. This was indeed bad and tragic enough, however not that
different from the fate of many millions of Ukrainians who learned
what communism meant for real. `Some of the worst mass murderers in
history were Jews’ writes Zionist Sever Plocker on the Israeli Ynet
disclosing the Holodomor and Jewish involvement in this colossal
crime, probably the greatest crime of the 20th century. The fate of my
great-grandmother was not any different from hundreds of thousands of
German civilians who died in an orchestrated indiscriminate bombing,
because they were Germans. Similarly, people in Hiroshima died just
because they were Japanese. 1 million Vietnamese died just because
they were Vietnamese and 1.3 million Iraqis died because they were
Iraqis. In short, the tragic circumstances of my great grandmother
wasn’t that special after all.
It Doesn’t make sense
It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its
current form, doesn’t make any historical sense. Here is just one
little anecdote to elaborate on:
If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich
(Judenrein – free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative
insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into
the Reich at the end of the war? I have been concerned with this
simple question for more than a while. I eventually launched into an
historical research of the topic and happened to learn from Israeli
holocaust historian professor Israel Gutman that Jewish prisoners
actually joined the march voluntarily. Here is a testimony taken from
Gutman’s book
One of my friends and relatives in the camp came to me on the night of
the evacuation and offered a common hiding place somewhere on the way
from the camp to the factory. ¦The intention was to leave the camp
with one of the convoys and to escape near the gate, using the
darkness we thought to go a little far from the camp. The temptation
was very strong. And yet, after I considered it all I then decided to
join (the march) with all the other inmates and to share their fate.2
I am left puzzled here; if the Nazis ran a death factory in
Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the
end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?
I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be
entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for
some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a
religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws.
We should strip the holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status
and treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time
and place
65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should reclaim our
history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people
stand up against their next-door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in
the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their
troubled history? If they genuinely planned to do so, as the early
Zionists claimed, why did they fail? Why did America tighten its
immigration laws amid the growing danger to European Jews? We should
also ask for what purpose do the holocaust denial laws serve? What is
the holocaust religion there to conceal? As long as we fail to ask
questions, we will be subjected to Zionists and their Neocons agents’
plots. We will continue killing in the name of Jewish suffering. We
will maintain our complicity in Western imperialist crimes against
humanity.
As devastating as it may be, at a certain moment in time, a horrible
chapter was given an exceptionally meta-historical status. Its
`factuality’ was sealed by draconian laws and its reasoning was
secured by social and political settings. The Holocaust became the
new Western religion. Unfortunately, it is the most sinister religion
known to man. It is a license to kill, to flatten, no nuke, to wipe,
to rape, to loot and to ethnically cleanse. It made vengeance and
revenge into a Western value. However, far more concerning is the fact
that it robs humanity of its heritage, it is there to stop us from
looking into our past with dignity. Holocaust religion robs humanity
of its humanism. For the sake of peace and future generations, the
holocaust must be stripped of its exceptional status immediately. It
must be subjected to thorough historical scrutiny. Truth and truth
seeking is an elementary human experience. It must prevail.
1.During WWII and after it was widely believed that soaps and
lampshades were being mass produced from the bodies of Jewish victims.
In recent years the Israeli Holocaust museum admitted that there was
no truth in any of those accusations. [?©]
2.Israel Gutman (editor), People and Ashes: Book Auschwitz-Birkenau
(Merhavia, 1957). [?©]
Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He
lives in London and is the author of two novels: A Guide to the
Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is
also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. He can
be reached at: [email protected]. Read other articles by Gilad.
istory-and-integrity/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
