GAZA CANNOT BE COMPARED TO HOLOCAUST
By Ali Moossavi
Arab American News, MI
d=article&cat=InOurOpinion&article=1070
Ma y 23 2008
The 60th anniversary of Israel’s "independence" was met with all the
usual fanfare celebrating the "achievements" of the "only democracy"
in the Middle East and as a refuge for Jews – Bush fed into that,
saying Masada won’t fall again.
What was missing, of course, was the real meaning of that
anniversary. It’s imperative, then, to revisit the Jewish state’s
crutch – the Holocaust.
Israel’s establishment – which was supposed to settle once and for
all the anti-Semitism that produced the genocide – only created
more questions.
The main question: How is the Holocaust viewed through the prism of
cultural and political lenses?
Recently, when Libya’s deputy permanent U.N. representative Ibrahim
Dabbashi made a comment comparing Gaza with the Nazi death camps that
sparked a walkout by Western envoys, the reaction revealed a fissure
in the ways the Holocaust is perceived.
To Libya — and by extension the Arab/Muslim world — the Holocaust
is a metaphor for what’s happening to the Palestinians. It’s a way to
communicate the urgent need to act against the death and destruction
visited upon a people by a racist regime in the same way the Nazis
did to the Jews. It’s also a way to frame the issue into a paradigm
of victims and victimizers in a way the Western world would understand
without any reservations.
For the walkout participants and the world they represent — which
includes Israel — the Holocaust was a singular world event with no
parallel in history. The evil behind it was unique and so are the
victims, therefore their nation-building project is unique and beyond
reproach. Any comparison of the Jewish state’s actions to the Third
Reich is immoral and — get ready for it — anti-Semitic.
U.S. envoy to the U.N. Alejandro Wolff said the remarks "reflect a
degree of historical ignorance and moral insensitivity that is one
of the large reasons… why peace in the Middle East is so difficult."
Of course, it’s the U.S.’s pro-Israel policy that makes Middle East
peace so difficult, given the foreign aid, vetoing of Security Council
resolutions and standing by silently allowing the Israelis to brutalize
Palestinians and bomb Lebanese with impunity.
There is a tendency among Muslims and especially Arabs to
"Holocaust-ize" the Palestinian issue. However, it should be noted
that Israel isn’t a fascist state and no premeditated genocide is
occurring. The atrocity that is Gaza differs in that the killings
are collective punishment to break the will of a rebel populace,
not a final solution to eradicate a whole people.
This isn’t to say that Israel isn’t a racist state. It is. It’s a
Jewish state where non-Jews — mainly Palestinians — are discriminated
against on a daily basis inside the state and violently oppressed in
the territories (despite the withdrawal, Israel still controls the air,
sea and border crossings of Gaza.)
But all this can’t be compared to the Holocaust for another reason:
While the destruction of European Jews occurred largely in secret,
the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza is happening out in the open,
for all the world to see. Perhaps that’s what Dabbashi meant when he
said, "it is worse than that."
Accusations of anti-Semitism aren’t a new phenomenon. Not even the
"new anti-Semitism," coined by the Anti-Defamation League in 1974,
is new, just a recycled intimidation tactic that has reached new
distorted heights, with terms like "Arab anti-Semitism."
Despite the contradiction — Arabs are Semites — this has been
used to great effect, especially throughout the Al-Aqsa Intifada,
to justify Israeli violence and repression and to de-legitimize
Palestine solidarity movements.
It doesn’t hold because anti-Zionism is a rational analysis of a
real problem, not an irrational prejudice containing Jewish cabals
and conspiracies at its core. Besides, it’s the Jews who are the
aggressors, not the victims in the Middle East conflict.
"Uniqueness" is where the Holocaust has assumed a religious aura —
an object of worship instead of an object of study, the meaning of
which only the elite priesthood can decipher.
In the eyes of this priesthood, the Holocaust is "unique" — it can’t
be compared to other acts of mass murder, and therefore the suffering
of Jews is unique.
Among the practitioners of this religion is Elie Wiesel, a lauded
Holocaust survivor and pro-Israel bigot, who has said the Holocaust
"lies outside, if not beyond, history" and that it "defies both
knowledge and description."
By de-politicizing the Holocaust and removing it from the realm of
rational historicity, it becomes a tool of a bourgeois establishment
to make money, expand political influence and silence dissent —
in short, a Holocaust industry, as written by Norman Finkelstein.
Deborah Lipstadt, author of "Denying The Holocaust," wrote of "immoral
equivalencies" in comparing the Holocaust with the 1915 Armenian
genocide, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. occupation
of Vietnam that left at least two million dead, among others.
The proper use of the history of the Holocaust is as a lesson about
the evils of racism and colonialism — the death camps wouldn’t have
been possible without the occupation of Europe.
Instead, the Holocaust is understood through the narrow lens of
anti-Semitism, and the exclusive narrative of Jewish suffering,
thereby excluding others.
And with 60 years of Israel we’re left with 60 years of Holocaust
perversion and pimping in the service of the oppression of another
people, a disaster not only for Palestinians and Muslims, but for
Jews as well.