ZGram - 9/28/2003 - "Jonathan Eric Lewis: The dangers of Arab Holocaust denial"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

September 28, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Remember that as late as 1996, the Nizkorites argued that Holocaust 
skeptics were so few and far between that they would fit into a 
telephone booth? 

We predicted that the Holocaust claims were so threadbare that it was 
only a matter of time until whole countries would wake up to the 
Holocaust Extortion Game and its political consequences. 

Here a fellow of the Tribe admits it - and yammers mightily:

[START]

The dangers of Arab Holocaust denial
By Jonathan Eric Lewis  September 19, 2003


Although the word has certainly been overused in the past few months 
to describe the world in which we now find ourselves, "Orwellian" 
remains the best term by which one can fully grasp some of the most 
bizarre and maddening pronouncements made by Arab dictators in the 
two years after 9/11.

A case in point is Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi's recent awarding 
of Roger Garaudy the Qaddafi International Human Rights Prize. The 
very fact that a "human rights prize" would be issued in the name of 
a brutal dictator and bestowed upon a French ex-Communist, convert to 
Islam, and infamous Holocaust denier, would have given George Orwell 
ample material for satire.

What is perhaps even more disconcerting is that this display of 
anti-Semitic hate passed with little condemnation from major 
international human rights organizations. This belies the fact that 
Holocaust denial is well within the political mainstream in much of 
the Arab-Islamic world and that many observers of the region now take 
this kind of action for granted. One of the few voices of protest 
came from Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center who 
accurately contended, "Qaddafi and Roger Garaudy are members in a 
brotherhood of hate that knowingly spreads the big lie of Holocaust 
denial as part of a worldwide effort to demonize the Jewish people."

Sadly, the state-run media in myriad Arab dictatorships regularly 
indulges in the most vulgar forms of Holocaust denial, arguing 
simultaneously that the Holocaust is a Zionist myth and that the 
Israelis are worse than the Nazis. While most observers rightly 
attribute this to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, it also reflects a 
far deeper - and even more dangerous - trend in Arab-Islamic 
political life, namely a retreat from historical reality and societal 
responsibility and into the fundamentally anti-democratic politics of 
the irrational. Arab Holocaust denial is, without question, deeply 
anti-Semitic. There is, however, this other dimension that merits 
further exploration.

The sheer virulence and popularity of Holocaust denial in the Arab 
media can no longer be explained away simply as the product of 
anti-Semitism and as a problem with which Jewish groups must deal on 
their own. It must be seen within the larger context of the lack of a 
rational, democratic political culture within the Arab world and as a 
problem for all people who believe in both safeguarding the 
democratic, rational, and scientific institutions upon which modern 
Western societies are built, and in promoting democratic political 
institutions in the Arab world. This is, in no manner, meant to 
suggest that there is some sort of 'racial' characteristic possessed 
by Arabs that encourages irrational political thought or that Arabs 
alone possess it. Indeed, one would only have to look at 1930s Europe 
to find the prevalence of irrational politics based on extreme 
nationalism, conspiracy theories, and cults of personalities. That 
said, one wonders why so many Arab intellectuals, rather than 
focusing on the economic and social, not to mention political 
problems, facing the Arab world, choose to diminish the Holocaust and 
mock the suffering of the Jewish people.

While I may seem to be making a particularly harsh judgment, consider 
the following examples of political irrationality at work in the Arab 
world today: Yasser Arafat's continual insistence that there was no 
Jewish Temple in Jerusalem; the theatrics of the Iraqi Parliament 
'voting' to recommend that Saddam Hussein not accept the UN Security 
Council Resolution demanding that Iraq disarm; and the simultaneous 
insistence on the part of the Arab Street that Arabs were not 
responsible for the World Trade Center attack and that the attacks 
were a justifiable reaction to American foreign policy.

Political irrationality is more than just anti-American or 
anti-Israeli propaganda. It is a mindset that lends itself to denial 
of all empirical evidence that disproves their widely held beliefs; a 
virulent anger at perceived conspiracies being directed against the 
Arab world; and an intense fear of non-conformist intellectuals such 
as Fouad Ajami, Joseph Farah, and Ali Salem who critically examine 
the flaws of Arab society and Islamic civilization. It finds a 
perfect home in the perverse world of Holocaust denial. After all, 
nothing could be more 'illogical,' in the strict definition of the 
word, than to categorically deny such a fundamental episode in human 
history.

As an indication of how bad the situation is, the Arab League's Zayed 
Center for Coordination and Follow-Up lent its name to an August 2002 
Holocaust denial conference in Abu Dhabi. Rather than discussing such 
important issues as overpopulation, illiteracy, and stagnant 
economies, the Arab League's think tank chose Holocaust denial as 
being a theme worthy of an international conference. Criticism of 
this forum was essentially ignored. The Zayed Center, thankfully, 
will soon be closed, a minor victory in the war of ideas between 
freedom versus totalitarianism.

The Arab press is likewise replete with Holocaust denial. In 1998, 
for instance, the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, Al-Hayat 
Al Jadidah, wrote that "the persecution of the Jews" was "a deceitful 
myth which the Jews have labeled the Holocaust and [have] exploited 
to get sympathy." Sheikh Mohammad Mehdi Shamseddin, head of Lebanon's 
Shiite Council, responding to the Vatican's release of "We Remember: 
A Reflection on the Shoah" that same year, called the Holocaust "a 
tissue of lies, as has been revealed by Western scientists, and it is 
being used to blackmail the world." These statements are widely 
repeated in slightly different forms throughout the Arab media and 
even repeated by Arab-Americans living in the West and are well 
within the current mainstream.

The root of the problem can be traced to the fact that, for many Arab 
intellectuals, the twentieth-century was one of failed economic and 
political ambitions and was a shameful chapter in the history of a 
great civilization. Myriad ideologies of Arab political life - 
Nasserism, Ba'athism, and militant Islam - all failed to place the 
Arab world on par with the West. This humiliation was compounded by 
the fact that many in the region saw themselves as victims of British 
and French imperialism in the first half of the century and of 
American and Israeli imperialism in the latter. There is indeed, a 
deep sense of shame, in the Arab world today, exemplified in the 
often-repeated notion among Arabs that Arabs couldn't have been 
behind the events of 9/11 because they weren't skilled enough to pull 
off such a brazen act.

Without disparaging the great achievements of Arab civilization 
throughout the centuries, it is arguable that, with the exception of 
the discovery of oil and the proliferation of oil wealth, the 
Arab-Islamic world has been on the sidelines for much of the 
twentieth-century. But rather than accepting responsibility for the 
failing of the Arab world and offering concrete solutions to concrete 
problems, many Arab intellectuals, both leftist and Islamist, had to 
find a scapegoat - an "Other" - to explain the region's failures.

This is where Holocaust denial fits in, for it both explains 
Zionism's success and provides the Arab world with a means to deny 
any responsibility for the myriad failures that engulf its societies. 
After all, if Zionism manufactured the lie of the Holocaust, then the 
Arab world, in exposing the lie, can view itself as the double victim 
of European imperialism and Zionist propaganda about European 
history. This attitude is best reflected in the musings of Mahmoud 
Al-Khatib writing in the Jordanian newspaper, Al-Arab Al-Yom: "The 
Holocaust is not what happened to the Jews in Germany, but rather the 
crime of the establishment of the State of Israel on the ruins of the 
Palestinian people." The denial of the Holocaust and the 
disparagement of Israel's existence are thus two sides of the same 
coin.

By incorporating myriad forms of Holocaust denial into their 
educational system and the state-run media, Arab leaders guaranteed 
that much of their populations would base their thinking about not 
only Israel, but also the United States, on the denial of one of the 
last century's greatest crimes. By presenting Washington as the part 
of a Jewish and Zionist conspiracy, anti-Western Arab intellectuals 
are able to construct a grand scheme in which Holocaust denial and 
anti-Americanism are blended together in a virulent strain of 
irrational politics that many in the United States government are 
just beginning to understand. The Egyptian gunman - the 
terrorist/murderer - who opened fire at an El Al terminal at Los 
Angeles International Airport on the Fourth of July reportedly told 
an employee that he believed Israeli prostitutes were responsible for 
infecting Egyptians with AIDS. One shudders to think of what his 
views on the Holocaust might have been.

Although America will be engaged militarily in the Arab world for 
years to come, it cannot simply rely on force to foster regional 
reform. That is not to say that our presence in Iraq is not 
justified. For the sake of both regional and world stability, America 
must begin a deliberate, organized, and sustained informational 
campaign to counteract the irrational political rhetoric so prevalent 
in the Arab-Islamic world, Holocaust denial being a primary example.

Congressional pressure must be put on Arab leaders friendly with 
Washington in order for them to halt the publication of Holocaust 
denial material in the state-run media. While this will not be an 
easy task, it must be done in order to safeguard the next generation 
of Arab youth from a form of political indoctrination that offers no 
hope and no future. Paraphrasing Shimon Peres, Arab societies that 
wish to be part of the modern, technological world, cannot be built 
on a foundation of lies. That said, the choice for reform or a 
further retreat into irrationality ultimately lies with Arab 
intellectuals and leaders.

In conclusion, Arab Holocaust denial is both about Jews and not about 
Jews. It simultaneously seeks to mock Jewish suffering and explain 
Arab failures. It is employed both to disparage Israel's existence 
and to present a narrative by which Arabs, not Jews, were the primary 
victims of Europe. It denies historical reality while simultaneously 
creating an alternative narrative of twentieth-century history. This 
line of irrational political thinking lends itself to 
totalitarianism, not democracy.

Jews need not feel guilty for building a vibrant democracy in the 
Middle East. The Arab world, on the other hand, must examine its 
flaws in a manner that doesn't blame its failures on Jewish success. 
The danger that the irrational politics of Holocaust denial represent 
is so great that it can no longer be seen as solely a problem of 
anti-Semitism or as a challenge for Jewish groups alone, but rather 
as a threat to liberal civil society and democracy taking root in the 
Arab-Islamic world.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of 
israelinsider.

(Sources:  http://www.midstreamthf.com/200304/issue.html ,
http://www.samajkantha.com/)