I'm thinking: Delegitimizing Denial

Posted
by Micah D. Halpern
Issue of September 4, 2009 / 15 Elul 5769
Anyone who denies the Holocaust has an agenda. The agenda is never about the truth, never about correcting history or about lending voice to an element of history that was simply written out. It is about using the Holocaust as ameans with which to deny Israel’s right to exist.
The Muslim world has been engulfed in a full blown campaign to deny the Holocaust. Their denial is predicated on a simple conspiracy theory.  It works like this: “Israel was created because of the Holocaust. If there was no Holocaust, then there is no historical rational or justification for the creation of the State of Israel.” The Muslim agenda is to invalidate the creation of the State of Israel. We see it happening right now with Hamas in Gaza.  Hamas has released a strongly worded statement in rejection of the UNRWA (United Nations Refugee Works Agency) which is charged with educating the 200,000 children of Gaza. The message, sent to the head of UNRWA, said that Hamas will not permit children to learn about the Holocaust because, in their eyes, the Holocaust is a “historical lie fabricated in order to steal Palestinian land.” They wrote: “We refuse to let our children study a lie invented by the Zionists.” Hamas asserts that a chapter in the new curriculum for 13 year-olds was to have a chapter “about the Israeli lies concerning the Nazis,” which is their code for the European Holocaust of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. The spokesman for UNRWA replied that UNRWA has not changed any curricula. He did not comment on whether UNRWA plans, at a future date, to teach about the Holocaust to Palestinian children. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuri said that the Hamas view is very clear. “[W]e oppose forcing the issue of the so-called Holocaust onto the syllabus, because it aims to reinforce acceptance of the occupation of Palestinian land.” Holocaust denial is not new to the Palestinians. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wrote his doctoral dissertation in the Soviet Union questioning the historicity of the Holocaust and advancing it as a model of how Jews distort history to advance their national agenda. This same motivation and logic has been co-opted by the president of Iran. Ahmadinejad challenges the Holocaust not just to be controversial, he does it in order to challenge the justification of Israel’s existence.  Sadly, there are Jews who agree with Abbas and Ahmadinejad. That is why the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta joined the infamous anti-Holocaust conference in Teheran. But they are wrong.  Not only is their agenda misplaced, their facts are inaccurate. The Holocaust was not the reason for the creation of the State of Israel. The Zionist movement began and was destined to succeed way before Hitler came to power. The United Nations declared a partition but that was by no means the creation of the State. A heroic battle was fought and 6373 lives were lost and from that battle, called the War of Independence, the state of Israel emerged. The Jewish people fought for and created a Jewish State and they called it Israel. The Muslim world will never understand.  No amount of explaining will get the point across, they have their own agenda. Micah D. Halpern is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Read his latest book THUGS. He maintains The Micah Report at www.micahhalpern.com