(Hat tip mt)
BUT WHAT’S THE ANSWER??
By: Alan Dershowitz
Why are so many of the grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who brought us the Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews?
Why have we seen such an increase in anti-Semitism and irrationally virulent anti-Zionism in western Europe?
To answer these questions, a myth must first be exposed. That myth is the one perpetrated by the French, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Swiss, the Belgians, the Austrians, and many other western Europeans: namely that the Holocaust was solely the work of German Nazis aided perhaps by some Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian collaborators.
False.
The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans: by Nazi sympathizers and collaborators among the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss, Belgians, Austrians and other Europeans, both Western and Eastern.
If the French government had not deported to the death camps more Jews than their German occupiers asked for; if so many Dutch and Belgian citizens and government officials had not cooperated in the roundup of Jews; if so many Norwegians had not supported Quisling; if Swiss government officials and bankers had not exploited Jews; if Austria had not been more Nazi than the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have had so many Jewish victims.
In light of the widespread European complicity in the destruction of European Jewry, the pervasive anti-Semitism and irrationally hateful anti-Zionism that has recently surfaced throughout western Europe toward Israel should surprise no one.
“Oh no,” we hear from European apologists. “This is different. We dont hate the Jews. We only hate their nation-state. Moreover, the Nazis were right-wing. Were left-wing, so we cant be anti-Semites.”
Nonsense.
The hard left has a history of anti-Semitism as deep and enduring as the hard right. The line from Voltaire to Karl Marx, to Levrenti Beria, to Robert Faurisson, to todays hard-left Israel bashers is as straight as the line from Wilhelm Mars to the persecutors of Alfred Dreyfus to Hitler.
The Jews of Europe have always been crushed between the Black and the Red – victims of extremism whether it be the ultra-nationalism of Khmelnitsky to the ultra-anti-Semitism of Stalin.
“But some of the most strident anti-Zionists are Jews, such as Norman Finkelstein and even Israelis such as Gilad Atzmon. Surely they can’t be anti-Semites?”
Why not? Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas collaborated with the Gestapo. Atzmon, a hard leftist, describes himself as a proud self-hating Jew and admits that his ideas derive from a notorious anti-Semite.
He denies that the Holocaust is historically proved but he believes that Jews may well have killed Christian children to use their blood to bake Passover matzah. And he thinks it’s “rational” to burn down synagogues.
Finkelstein believes in an international Jewish conspiracy that includes Steven Spielberg, Leon Uris, Eli Wiesel, and Andrew Lloyd Webber!
“But Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians,” the European apologists insist, “and we are sensitive to the plight of the underdog.”
No, you’re not! Where are your demonstrations on behalf of the oppressed Tibetans, Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, Kurds, or even Ukrainians? Where are your BDS movements against the Chinese, the Russians, the Cubans, the Turks, or the Assad regime?
Only the Palestinians, only Israel ? Why? Not because the Palestinians are more oppressed than these and other groups.
Only because their alleged oppressors are Jews and the nation-state of the Jews. Would there be demonstrations and BDS campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians if they were oppressed by Jordan or Egypt ?
Oh, wait! The Palestinians were oppressed by Egypt and Jordan . Gaza was an open-air prison between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt was the occupying power. And remember Black September, when Jordan killed more Palestinians than Israel did in a century? I dont remember any demonstration or BDS campaigns — because there werent any.
When Arabs occupy or kill Arabs, Europeans go ho-hum. But when Israel opens a soda factory in Maale Adumim, which even the Palestinian leadership acknowledges will remain part of Israel in any peace deal, Oxfam parts ways with Scarlett Johansson for advertising a soda company that employs hundreds of Palestinians
Keep in mind that Oxfam has provided “aid and material support” to two anti-Israel terrorist groups, according to the Tel Aviv-based Israeli Law Group.
The hypocrisy of so many hard-left western Europeans would be staggering if it were not so predictable based on the sordid history of Western Europe’s treatment of the Jews.
Even England , which was on the right side of the war against Nazism, has a long history of anti-Semitism, beginning with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the notorious White Paper of 1939, which prevented the Jews of Europe from seeking asylum from the Nazis in British-mandated Palestine . And Ireland , which vacillated in the war against Hitler, boasts some of the most virulent anti-Israel rhetoric.
The simple reality is that one cannot understand the current western European left-wing war against the nation-state of the Jewish people without first acknowledging the long-term European war against the Jewish people themselves.
Theodore Herzl understood the pervasiveness and irrationality of European anti-Semitism, which led him to the conclusion that the only solution to Europe’s Jewish problem was for European Jews to leave that bastion of Jew hatred and return to their original homeland, which is now the state of Israel .
None of this is to deny Israel’s imperfections or the criticism it justly deserves for some of its policies. But these imperfections and deserved criticism cannot even begin to explain, must less justify, the disproportionate hatred directed against the only nation-state of the Jewish people and the disproportionate silence regarding the far greater imperfections and deserved criticism of other nations and groups including the Palestinians.
Nor is this to deny that many western European individuals and some western European countries have refused to succumb to the hatred against the Jews or their state. The Czech Republic comes to mind. But far too many western Europeans are as irrational in their hatred toward Israel as their forbearers were in their hatred toward their Jewish neighbours.
As author Amos Oz once aptly observed: the walls of his grandparents’ Europe were covered with graffiti saying, “Jews, go to Palestine .” Now they say, “Jews, get out of Palestine ” ? by which is meant Israel ..
Who do these western European bigots think theyre fooling? Only fools who want to be fooled in the interest of denying that they are manifesting new variations on their grandparents’ old biases.
Any objective person with an open mind, open eyes, and an open heart must see the double standard being applied to the nation-state of the Jewish people. Many doing so are the grandchildren of those who lethally applied a double standard to the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
For shame!
We don’t hate the Jews. We only hate their nation-state.
“But Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians,” the European apologists insist, “and we are sensitive to the plight of the underdog.”
A very good article by a very good Attorney.
Now let us go back in history of the Jewish nation-state. That is the State that is hated. Why should she trigger anti-Semitism.
The Gaza strip was occupied by Egypt. The West Bank of the Jordan was occupied and annexed to Trans-Jordan who changed its name to The H.K. of Jordan. That was the situation till 1967. No Palestinian identity, and an “open prison” in Gaza under the Egyptians.
On May 15, 1967 Egypt moved large forces into Sinai, and Egyptian Migs were flying over Dimona.
On May 19 Egypt asks the U.N. to remove its observers. Egypt blocks the Tiran Straits for Israel’s shipping and moves 80,000 troops and 550 tanks into the Sinai.
On May 27 the Egyptian forces are advanced to the Israeli border.
On June 5 Israel strikes Egypt and sends a message to King Hussein of Jordan as accounted by him:
[…] We received a telephone call at Air Force Headquarters from U.N. General Odd Bull. […] The Norwegian General informed me that the Israeli Prime Minister had addressed an appeal to Jordan. Mr. Eshkol summarily announced that the Israeli offensive started that morning, Monday June 5, with operations directed against the United Arab Republic, and then he added: “If you don’t intervene, you will suffer no consequences.” (My war with Israel by King Hussein).
King Hussein attacked Israel and captured the High Commissioner’s palace in Jerusalem.
On June 19 Israel suggested to return the territories for a peace treaty, but the Arab League refused and issued its three NO’s: No negotiations; No Recognition; No peace.
That is a concise history of that period. But let us ask ourselves a few questions:
1. If Jordan had not attacked Israel in 1967, as pleaded by Israel, there would be no “occupied territories” on the west bank. The territory would remain part of the Kingdom of Jordan.
2. Would there be a Palestinian aspiration under Jordanian rule?
3. If Israel did not exist, who would have liberated the land from Jordanian rule, to enable one day to establish a Palestinian State?
4. Does anybody believe that, if Jordan would not join the war in 1967 and loose the west bank, the Palestinians would have a chance to establish their own State?
5. The 1967 war and Israel’s conquests enabled the Palestinians to draw a road map for their future and eventually have their own State. Let us ask ourselves:
o Could the Palestinians establish Universities under Egyptian or Jordanian rule.
o Could they publish a newspaper prior to 1967?
o Have they even dreamed of a Radio Station and Television broadcasts of their own?
All this they have today.
Unfortunately they missed the many opportunities they had to establish their own State.
After the three NO’s Prime Minister Eshkol talked in the summer of 1967 with prominent Palestinians about Autonomy. This was the first try in history to give Palestinians self rule. The answer he got from them was: It is very interesting, but if we accept it we will certainly end up with a bullet in our heads.
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True and well summarised, but as Dershowitz wrote and as we know עם לבדד ישכון … With my constant thoughts on those three נפשות nebach
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