The Holocaust, Palestine and
Israel:Revision, Denial and Myth
by Frank
Scott©May 2005
"There is no flag large enough to
cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose
which is unattainable." : U.S. historian Howard
Zinn, 1993
The murderous treatment of European Jews during the
second world war has become almost legendary
in its depiction as a unique and singularly important
example of bigoted inhumanity, carried to barbarous
extremes. No other experience from among the overwhelming
number of historic cases of mass brutality has ever
achieved such status in western consciousness, partly
because most of the other slaughters were of third world,
non - white people. But despite this specific outrage
being portrayed as an unparalleled tragedy, injustice,
bigotry and mass murder have been practiced and gone
relatively unquestioned since its occurrence, contrary to
the lessons supposedly learned from its example. Given
this contradictory impact, it should be permissible to
look, as clearly as evidence will allow, at exactly what
took place, what its moral lesson could be, what its
political use has been, and how it has helped perpetuate
rather than end notions of racial superiority and
division that have dogged the world for millennia.
The patriarchal belief systems on which Judaism,
Christianity and Islam are all based depend on faith, far
more than material evidence. What historic evidence
exists is subject to human interpretation, and as an
example of how varied that interpretation can be, we have
these three religions. All are founded on the same
original story, with similar scriptures, prophets, and
the alleged word of god. God's words apparently say
different things to different people at different times.
Religious history, in which faith and interpretation loom
large, is really not that different from secular history.
The original story of the United States, for instance,
was one of European discovery, heroic conquest,
incredible development and national triumph. That was
from the standpoint of the official historians, before
the revisionists had their say . A more modern
interpretation of that story includes the near physical
and cultural genocide of the native populations of the
continents which Europe discovered, even though people
had been living on them for thousands of years. A newer
view of American history also saw chattel slavery as
something beyond an unfortunate economic arrangement
which led to civil war and racial misunderstanding, and
more as an experience of murderous human degradation
carried to inhuman marketing extremes, with social
repercussions still apparent and still not fully
understood .
The immense military and civilian loss of
World War II often gets buried under the constant
reference to Jewish Holocaust and search for
Nazis around the world. At least 55 million
people died, 25 million of those military and 30
million civilians, during World War II, besides
the Jewish claim of 5 million plus Jews! Former
Soviet Union, USSR, suffered the most with more
than 13,000,000 military and 7,000,000 civilian
death. China was the second who suffered
3,500,000 military and 10,000,000 civilian death.
Germany was the third with 3,500,000 military and
3,800,000 civilian death. Poland lost 120,000
military and 5,300,000 civilian. Japan lost
1,700,000 military and 380,000 civilian.
Yugoslavia lost 300,000 military and 1,300,000
civilian. Romania lost 200,000 military and
465,000 civilian. France lost 250,000 military
and 360,000 civilians. British Empire and
Commonwealth lost 452,000 military and 60,000
civilian. Italy lost 330,000 military and 80,000
civilian. Hungary lost 120,000 military and
280,000 civilian. Czechoslovakia lost 10,000
military and 330,000 civilian. Of the 405,399
Americans that lost their lives during World War
II, there were 78,976 missing in Action. It was
the Americans who suffered the least number of
civilian death.
The world still awaits an independent inquiry
of what really happened on September 11, 2001!
Though it was just a domestic secuiity failure in
USA, Bush administration already destroyed
Afghanistan and Iraq showing the world their
massive and quick destructive power. Besides some
myserious inlegible video and audio tapes, no one
really knows how a military style well
coordinated incident can happen in the USA
avoiding massive military, CIA, FBI, NORAD and
extensive news media!Finally, we must not ignore
that Israel, not Iraq nor Iran nor North Korea,
is the worst violator of UN resolutions. Israel
violated UN resolutions, 66 times, since 1967
challenging its authority and ignoring all
international call for peace.
excerpt Deepak Sarkar, Canada, www.kolki.com
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Historic views and re-views of
the past are taken by those with possible preconceptions
based on their education, training and belief systems;
historians can find selective truth in the material
evidence at hand, while creating immaterial evidence as
well, often doing so unconsciously, without any balance,
and even stressing extremes. In doing this they are not
substantially different from religious believers who pick
and choose from what material evidence exists, if any, to
fit into the belief system . God and the accepted
prophets are sited to back up whatever is seen as good,
righteous and just, and a satan, with demonic assistants,
is created to account for the evil, craven brutality that
is the darker side of human development. Substitute us
for God, and them for Satan, and we have much secular
history.
The religious or scientific system produces its
historians, who are responsible not only for interpreting
the evidence according to the preconceived rules of faith
and politics, but in many cases, for the creation of
evidence to fit within the mental structure that thereby
strengthens and reinforces the system's foundation.
This is not unique to one religious or national group,
but is common to all which have an established story of
origin, and a following interpretation of history to
neatly fit into the original premise. Given the dualism
of western religious science, logical materialists who
claim physical objectivity as their basis supposedly have
nothing in common with the magical imaterialism of
religion. But despite age old battles between secularists
and deists, neither side in this either-or conflict
really knows any more than what is believed, accepted,
and verified by the evidence that solidifies the
foundation of its system of belief. Anyone who
contradicts that evidence is either disregarded, or
tossed out of the realm of accepted reality. In the most
extreme cases, the contradictor is either imprisoned, or
burned at the stake .
It is in the serious questioning of rigidly held belief
systems that humanity - sometimes - advances beyond
simple duality, arriving at a relatively reasoned
interpretation based on objective study of material
evidence, free of previously learned bias. In these
cases, divine good and demonic evil are left to the
immaterialist community, and the attempt is made to learn
from previous experience and hope for a better future
that does not repeat past mistakes. That hope is
nonexistent when free thought and critical appraisal are
denied. It is in particular danger today, more so than in
the darkest ages of our past, when wanton slaughter may
have been the order of the day, but the weapons to affect
it were infinitely more primitive.
In the aftermath of the nazi assault on European Judaism
, we have seen a modern form of biblical interpretation
evolve out of an historic event. This interpretation is
based almost as much on faith as on verifiable fact. What
should be at least fairly conclusive according to
examined evidence has become a religious belief system in
which no examination or question of evidence is allowed
unless it strengthens the already existing and accepted
story. The event is not only treated as unquestioned as
the word of god, but if dared to be questioned at all,
punishable as blasphemy. Such is the modern burden of
what is called The Holocaust, having even its name
reflect a biblical sounding event, like The Creation.
A terrible price was paid by the Jews of Europe in the
experience of this awful episode of history, but a heavy
price is still being paid, in some sense by the whole
world, but mostly by Palestinians, who played no role in
these atrocities, though they have paid dearly, and
unconscionably, in their aftermath.
The affect of the holocaust on 21st century life
continues to be as profound, and dangerous, as its impact
on the previous century. What is euphemistically called
"The Middle East Problem" was really created by
the western holocaust, and dumped on the people of the
Middle East. The solution to this problem involves the
West confronting its own responsibility, and ending its
punishment of the Arab world, especially the
Palestinians, who have absorbed generations of abuse and
had a horrific, biblical vengeance visited upon them for
something they never did. Further, the accepted story of
the event, seemingly free of any material forces or
consequences save depravity and hatred of age old origin,
invites a fatalism which accepts ancient beliefs in a
natural evil at the core of humanity. Or at least, a
majority of humanity, which seems historically
predisposed to persecute and murder a specific minority.
There might be no better place to begin seeking a
solution than at the very event that has served to help
create the problem. But any attempt at reconsideration of
this particular tragedy in a way that questions some of
the accepted story is treated as sacrilegious, insane,
unthinkable anti-Semitism, and in the most extreme cases,
as a crime punishable by jail or deportation.
Revisionists are called "holocaust deniers" by
those who label them in discriminatory fashion in order
to remove them from any serious consideration. The
denigrating label makes it seem as though they deny that
any Jews were murdered, or that Jews did not suffer
terribly at the hands of Nazis and their supporters.
Calling these people names in order to reduce them as
beings is a bigotry no different, in essence, from using
derogatory labels like nigger, spic, kike or redneck. The
label's purpose is to belittle and deform, reducing
people to caricatures and worse; beings outside the realm
of acceptability and not worthy of consideration by
"normal" people .
There may be unsavory and bigoted types among those who
call themselves holocaust revisionists, but such people
exist in business, government and religion; do we
entirely dismiss those worlds because some of their
practitioners may not meet our standards for
acceptability? Some who claim to be revisionists simply
change the pejorative "nazi" to the perforative
"communist" and charge the same wholesale
slaughters and incredible death tolls, only with
different victims and different murderers. Far more
important are the revisionists unmotivated by anything
more than a sense of human inquiry , who simply attempt
to confront and question accepted history with as much or
as little bias as the official historians.
. We are fed tales which provoke bloody warfare and are
devoutly believed and supported by some, and just as
devoutly disbelieved and opposed by others. But neither
school of thought is, as yet, proposing that all
opposition to its belief system be completely silenced,
totally disregarded or jailed. Some have indeed suffered
such a fate, but they are still the exception and not the
rule. Unfortunately, among holocaust revisionists, the
rule is persecution; first, of the very idea, and next,
of the person expressing the very idea.
Our political economy of religious science depends on the
double standards of dualism, but the issue of free speech
tends to be revered by people from all sides of the
political and social spectrum. It would be better for us
all if we were less selective about where, when , and on
what subjects such freedom could be exercised.
Revisionists try to make the murderous history of the
holocaust an aspect of reality, rather than a religious
experience of unquestioned worship and sorrow. This is
their sin, but it is not only they who suffer; all who
profess a belief in freedom of expression, speech and
thought pay a price. But that is not the case in the area
dubbed "holocaust denial", where any outrage
against free speech and free thought is not only allowed,
but righteously supported and even vindictively
applauded, wherever it occurs.
The double standard regarding this issue is among the
most troubling of our social hypocrisies. One can easily
imagine those depicted as demons, like Saddam Hussein or
Slobodan Milosevic, being regarded as heroes, had they
persecuted alleged holocaust deniers instead of operating
against Israeli and American interests, for which they
now face trial as war criminals.
The horrendous treatment of european Jews , their forced
exodus from national homelands to concentration and slave
labor camps, and their further brutalization and murders,
are believed part of a centrally planned process of
annihilation. This historically unique crime was
industrialized, with an around the clock production line
of transport, gas chambers, crematoria and almost
unimaginable cruelty. That is the brief outline generally
accepted by most of the world, or at least the western
world, which might as well be the whole world given the
power balance. Of course, gas chambers were not alleged
to be the only method employed for these mass murders,
and the basic crimes were known of before that aspect of
the story was established. But though official
records and scholarship account for many deaths
attributable to other causes and methods, the popular
acceptance of the phrase "six million died in the
gas chambers" is hardly ever discussed as being
impossible. In fact, there is almost as much use of the
dreadful sounding "six million died in the
ovens", with many believing that six million living
human beings were actually thrown into mass fiery pits.
The world was witness to the awful films of the liberated
camps , the emaciated survivors, and the piles of skin
and bone corpses. It is as if these sickening images were
not enough, and even more ghastly ones have to be created
in order to identify this as history's most terrible
crime.
That such an incredible murderous deed, of such massive
proportions, was concealed from the world until long
after it took place is barely acknowledged as worthy of
any question. Several histories of the war were written
at its end which made no mention of this particular
horrendous crime. Some survivors of the concentration
camps wrote of their terrible experiences, with no
mention of gas chambers. Are we to believe that all these
writers , including Eisenhower and Churchill, were simply
anti-Semites?
(Dresden)
This awful scheme for exterminating an entire people was
ordered by passionate zealots who were
motivated by irrational hatred. Yet, conversely, it was
organized by a core of dispassionate, bureaucratic
clones, and then carried out by a stoic force of robotic
killers . And this hideous production was performed while
Germany suffered devastation in the war, with many of its
people going hungry, its economy sorely lacking
industrial supplies and its imminent defeat looming.
Might there be legitimate cause for questioning at least
some parts of the generally accepted story? Should
critical reappraisal be completely forbidden, given that
this insane act of collective murder was the major
rationale for the displacement and destruction of another
people, the Palestinians, far removed from any connection
to Europe save for their domination by its colonial
power?
And considering the depiction of Germans as a collection
of homicidal monsters, couldn't one of these satanic
sadists have considered a photograph of his, and their,
horrendous work with gas chambers? Is there any wonder
that the same bureaucratic number crunchers who tabulated
every single person rounded up and sent to a camp, were
unable to tabulate the actual murders? And since all gas
chambers were allegedly destroyed by the Germans - who
seemed anxious to get rid of all evidence of the crime,
but were extremely careless about leaving alive
participants in committing the crime - isn't it worthy of
question that their existence is based on stories and
confessions after the fact, with no one actually
witnessing these mass murder machines in action?
It should not be a crime to wonder why not one actual
photo of a gas chamber exists, that all were destroyed
and only reproductions of them are offered as evidence.
The only photos are of doors or passages leading to such
chambers, and showers said to have served as gas
chambers, but these all defy logic and only serve belief.
Would we accept explanation for the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima or Nagasaki by being presented with photos of
roads leading into town? Or the testimony of survivors
and participants in the bombings, but with no other
evidence except their testimony that the cities were
devastated by such a weapon?
Given the overwhelming evidence that clearly verifies the
persecution and murder of so many, why is it that
this major part of the story is so reliant on after the
fact memories or detective work? That several million
people were killed this way and that not one photo exists
is certainly worthy of questioning, given that so much
else was recorded in photos and film. We have abundant
pictorial evidence of the dreadful conditions of the
camps, the horrible images that have been imprinted on us
over the years. Yet, none of these showed a gas chamber,
its ruins, or recorded comments about its existence . How
can it be a sin and why should it be a crime to question
this story? Is it odd that some might see the denial of
that freedom as part of a political program to insure
that Israel is above any criticism and kept a safe place
for world jewry, even though its reality has been quite
the opposite? The historical record of an earlier episode
of inhuman brutality in the United States offers an
uncomfortable contrast.
During
the wretched historical period of American lynching, more
than two thousand blacks were dragged from their homes or
prison cells and publicly hanged, often having their
bodies literally torn apart after killing. These bestial
events were sometimes viewed by hundreds of people in an
often festive atmosphere of collective madness. Countless
photographs exist of these bizarre, barbaric affairs,
with families proudly posing, even smiling, in front of a
brutalized black body hanging from a tree. There may be
legend and myth surrounding much of this period, but
there is undeniable evidence of the bloody deeds in these
photos, some of which were made into postcards and mailed
to friends and families, later becoming exhibits at
museums and galleries.
Should this terrible episode of American history be
offered as proof that we were the most beastly race on
earth? Far worse than later Germans, who didn't gleefully
photograph their atrocities and happily share those
photos with friends? Why not try to learn more about this
sordid past, rather than simply see the atrocities as
acts of a deranged people, having no basis in material
history save as a description of mass psychosis, based on
age old biblical hatred of...Africans? After all, we have
no historic verification for how many Africans were
murdered during what was called, less biblically, 'the
passages', when slaves were stuffed onto ships like
animals, and beaten, starved and
drowned while crossing the Atlantic Ocean, with death
toll estimates ranging from a few to many millions. Has
it been blasphemy to examine that history , as closely as
evidence will allow, in order to arrive at something
approximating what actually took place? Does any
reexamination of this brutal period, including a
revisionist pointing out that some slaves lived in more
material security than some workers, indicate a form of
'slavery denial'?
We certainly cannot change the fact of inhuman chattel
slavery in our past, nor the tremendous impact it has had
on our national development. But confronting our past
might help us change the present. Nearly half the prison
population of the USA is black , and ghettos and poverty
wracked communities still number black residents in the
hundreds of thousands. That should be reason enough to
want to learn more about that past and how it affects our
society today . Really confronting such questions and
seeking answers based on social justice and humanitarian
values could mean social revolution, but even if we don't
go that far, knowing more can at least help us
mythologize less.
We would not make the crimes committed by the nazis any
less horrid by removing myths, legends and emotional
slander from the very real pain and suffering they
caused. What of the many alleged tales of their ghastly
practices, like making soap from the body fat of dead
jews, stuffing pillows with their hair or making lamp
shades from their skin? Some of these are still repeated
by those who simply accepted any tale of German
degeneracy, no matter how mindless sounding or lacking
any basis in fact. The generally accepted and horrendous
enough toll of a million deaths at Auschwitz was once
believed to be more than four million. These inflated
death toll figures and tales of bizarre brutality are no
longer tolerated by anyone with claims to serious
scholarship, with agreement here between revisionists and
the official historians of holocaust studies.
Survivors are no less cursed with memories of an awful
reality when these kinds of exaggerations are faced as
fabrications born of panic, gullibility, and retaliatory
hatred . This at one time unquestioned parade of inhuman
horrors became part of accepted history and helped lead
to the birth of a new nation, Israel, established as a
haven for the persecuted survivors of this bloodcurdling,
genocidal campaign conducted by the nazis.
Israel's existence since its origin in 1948 has remained
critically unquestioned by the mainstream west and its
officially sanctioned political opposition, mainly
because of the horrors the world learned about the
holocaust. And learned, and learned, and relearned.
Hardly a day passes that some TV
program, film, workshop, museum display, lecture or
school curriculum is not dealing with what took place, in
horrifying detail. People are gripped and shaken by the
vicarious experience of this tragedy, recreated in
veritable theme parks of misery and suffering. They are
compelled to wonder how people could perform such
contemptible violence, and how it could have happened
without outside intervention. But these same people still
support doctrines of racial supremacy and the mass murder
of war ; they draw no connection to the lesson supposedly
learned from the holocaust tragedy, since that lesson
seems specific only to that single experience and its
relation to the unquestioned need for Israel as a haven
for Jews.
State organized violence, human persecution and bigotry
continue, and civilized populations still tolerate racial
and colonial policies that treat people and their
homelands as worthless, unless owned, occupied or
exploited by superior beings. These matters are
relatively unquestioned by many who are moved to tears by
the story of the holocaust, since that event is treated
as an almost separate reality from human history, let
alone the sub category of jewish history, whose thousands
of years seem reduced to about five during the war. And
Israel is still perceived by many as a home for people
rejected by the world, with no place else to go. This is
a gross simplification, but so is the larger story.
Israel did not just 'happen' in 1948, though that might
as well be the case
given popular ignorance of its history.
In the late 19th century, when the european zionist
movement for a jewish homeland was established, most Jews
wanted no such home. They were content being citizens in
the nations where they had become part of the fabric of
life, having worked hard to overcome bigotry that saw
them as 'other'. Many of them took serious issue with
zionism, which existed long before most nazis were born,
let alone in power. This historic fact is not just
overlooked, but is unknown to people who think of zionism
only in its modern socialistic form of the kibbutz, and
see Israel as something that happened purely because of
the nazi assault on european jews.
Among several proposed sites, Palestine was the biblical
real estate most desired by many Zionists as a
national homeland , since it was believed to be their
source, even by allegedly secular jews who claimed to be
atheists. That contradiction still prevails; one can
strongly assert no belief in god, while accepting a
homeland for jews in israel, because that land was
promised to them by...god. The holocaust helps make it
possible to overlook this contradiction by siting the
jewish
tragedy at the hands of the nazis as verification for the
need to create israel. And even though most of the
world's jews are moved to at least psychologically
support Israel's existence, they have never been there
and have no plan to even visit, let alone become settlers
.
The fact that as late as 1942, some Zionists and Nazis
were discussing the island nation of Madagascar as a
possible homeland for Jews - with as little concern for
the native people there as in Palestine - is another
little known aspect of the relationships between two
groups proposing the same alienating idea, along
decidedly different lines; that Jews did not belong with
'others' and should be living in their own, separate
country .
With no consideration for some of these matters, we
inherit a history with little if any context, negating
any awareness of events that lead to or connect from one
to the other in any understandable, if occasionally mind
boggling way. Things suddenly happen, with no explanation
for events other than their being caused or provoked by
saintly angels or demonic monsters. Are their material,
worldly reasons for these events? Where do these
situations and creatures come from? We are not to ask
once the story, the gods and the demons have been
established. That is, if we wish to remain helpless
creatures shaped by history, rather than active beings
who play a conscious role in its creation.
The revision of all history, literally to look at it
again, is necessary if we wish to create a future without
repeating past mistakes. The maligned school of holocaust
revision could make a contribution towards understanding
and peace, rather than represent a criminal assault
against political religious belief, as it is portrayed.
Taking a new look at any part of history, recent or past,
may lead to greater awareness of material forces which
are controllable by humans. This contradicts the
fatalistic view of humanity as inherently beastly and in
need of control by elites, which are usually working for
god. This biblical notion at the core of many human acts
of mass murder flies in the face of real human experience
and calls for more, not less questioning of what we are
told about anything.
Whether it is fed to us as legend, myth or alleged fact,
nothing should be treated as unquestionable. Facts are
too often based on as little proof as the legendary and
mythological. For a recent, obvious example, we need look
no further than 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq.
Thousands of people are dead and a government was
destroyed because of those alleged weapons, which do not,
and did not, exist.
The suffering of the Jews in Europe during the second
world war would not become less tragic under critical
appraisal, though its political impact might change, and
this is the major reason for its being kept an
untouchable topic. In order to maintain Israel's position
as a special nation, the myth of the jewish people as a
forever endangered species is perpetuated. The holocaust
is seen as the culmination of a long history of murderous
persecution of Jews by the rest of the gentile world,
with
no allowance for anything but continued misery and
eternal threat. This incredibly negative and narrow view
estranges people from humanity, and in so doing helps
create a warped history of isolation. A contradictory
ideological need to be separate and different from
'them', while humanistically desiring similarity and
equality with 'them', can only prolong the problem of
what is called anti-semitism, despite that language
confusion which so labels europeans who are no more
Semites than are people from Finland or Nigeria.
Given the verifiable history of jewish persecution in the
past, can that possibly justify the persecution
of Palestinians in the present? Assuming that there was
indeed a plot by european gentiles to murder all the Jews
of the continent, why should people who have no real or
fictional connection to such a sin be the ones to pay the
awful price of its atonement? And even if it is necessary
to insist that one inhuman episode was unique and
different from others, that one suffering was more
painful than another, how can any benefit be gained by
causing still more suffering? No horror experienced in
Europe should serve as rationale for punishment inflicted
on people other than Europeans, if any at all are to
still be paying for this experience of inhuman slaughter
among, sadly, many such historic experiences. A more
recent human disaster can offer several comparisons, even
if only in the treatment of the story.
As an example of how closer examination of events which
take on near legendary proportions can lead to better
understanding, consider the disastrous day Americans
remember as '911'. It did not become less tragic when
investigation revealed that the original estimated death
toll of nearly 7,000 was actually just over 3,000. The
bereaved were no less saddened , the nation no less
shocked . Nor, unfortunately, were political forces
swayed to change their policies based on this lowered
figure. But history was served in moving the story from
exaggeration, arrived at during chaotic moments when all
matters were barely verifiable, to the actual human cost
and impact of all those deaths. Lowering the death toll
was not a form of 911 'denial', and it did nothing to
change the essence of the event.
Many still believe it was the worst thing to ever happen,
if limiting the area of events to the USA. But far more
people have been killed in bombings in other countries
than died that day in America, and to acknowledge that
fact - still generally unacknowledged - might help to
better understand why this act of terrorism might have
taken place, rather than viewing it as a gesture of
sadistic madmen who didn't like our style of dress, our
democracy, or our social behavior patterns . Were they
simply 'anti-americans', for some ancient, irrational
biblical reason? Or were there social and political as
well as religious motivations for their murderous attack?
Would it hurt us to move beyond simplistic, reductionist
explanations in order to arrive at some understanding of
material reality that might help our relations with the
rest of the world?
The reexamination of 911 did not overlook the enormous
cost in death benefits and the number of hustlers who
rushed to claim money, posing as kin of those who
allegedly perished. In this, it bore a relation to what
some call the 'holocaust industry', referring to the
money making aspects of that tragedy that entice scam
artists as well as legitimate victims. Finding an actual,
verifiable death toll saved money for insurers, but the
material evidence was examined not only to save money,
nor to hurt the memory of survivors, but to help see the
disaster from a more reality based perspective. We are
still learning about the poorly reported and even more
poorly explained 911 events, and the wars and further
terrors they have unleashed in Afghanistan and especially
Iraq. Many still believe that Arabs had nothing to do
with them, and that they were organized and executed by
the U.S. government. Others claim it was the Israeli
Mossad, and some believe it was the act of a vengeful
god, punishing us for whatever sins these divinely
oriented conspiracy freaks perceive. But none of these
theories, though they may be argued, laughed at or
ridiculed, are forbidden. Nor are those who entertain
them threatened with jail . This is as it should be, but
isn't, where the holocaust is concerned.
Israel's seemingly spontaneous 'immaculate conception' in
1948 is no more materially verifiable than the older
religious legend, but is as devoutly believed by a
community of the faith. The Palestinian people who lived
in what later became Israel were conveniently removed
from material or critical consideration. They were denied
as a people and never considered as humans of any
importance , so it was easy to buy them out, kick them
out, or wipe them out if they resisted. Their painful
history of injustice has outraged most of the world, as
evidenced by countless votes in the United Nations which
go against continued theft of Palestinian land and
brutalization of the Palestinian
people. But the nature of their suffering receives hardly
a blink from the center of global power in the USA, where
real Palestinian deniers are an infinitely greater
problem than any alleged holocaust deniers.
The American government and major opinion shaping
institutions have participated in the creation of Israel
as a lily-white land of suffering inhabitants, first
escaping the horror of the nazis, and then preyed upon by
the dreadful Arabs, portrayed as bloodthirsty demons
anxious to 'push israel into the sea', as one of the
favored slogans has it. This colorful defiance of
geography and politics may have actually been expressed
as a desire by some witless opponent; more likely, it
came from an Israeli and has become useful to repeat in
provoking fear and anxiety among Jews all over the world,
as the horrible holocaust story is rerun in their
imaginations each time a threat to jews is perceived or
alleged . And these threats usually seem to happen in a
social vacuum, occupied by an innocent people in a
rarified world befitting a fairy tale as much as a
physical reality.
The contradictory notion of jews as a historically
blessed, special, privileged sector of humanity, and at
the same time as a historically scorned, hated and
brutalized group as well, is reinforced by the
conflicting histories of Israel, Palestine , the
holocaust experience and the status of Judaism in the
world today. To say that a people hated and persecuted by
the gentile world - which means just about everyone else
- for thousands of years, and then slaughtered in the
worst pogrom of them all, could become powerful enough to
hold sway over governments and public opinion is
dismissed as just another form of anti-Semitism. The mere
mention of Jewish power, exercised in obvious fashion and
so acknowledged by many Jewish groups and publications,
reduces not only zionists but large segments of the
gentile world, including its left wing, to screeching
charges of anti-Semitism at those who defiantly refer to
'the power that dare not speak its name'. But the U.S.
government and media and their global subordinates do not
hesitate to follow the story so outlined, perpetuating
the myth that becomes reality when so many not only
believe it, but act on that belief.
Admiral Thomas Moorer of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff wrote in this regard:
"I've never seen a president --I don't care
who he is-- stand up to them [the
Israelis]. It just boggles your mind. They
always get what they want. The Israelis know
what's going on all the time. I got to the
point where I wasn't writing anything down. If
the American people understood what grip those
people have on our government, they would rise up
in arms. Our citizens don't have any idea what
goes on." [See Washington Report 12/1999,
p.124 quoting from Andrew Hurley's book,
"One Nation Under Israel"].
|
Jewish ethnic and cultural gifts
to the arts and sciences have made incredible
contributions toward making the human community whole.
Biblical and ideological Judaism contradicts that
wholeness by treating the rest of the world as 'other'
and insisting on its own uniqueness . Much of the world
is drawn to the warm, humanistic culture, while it is
repelled by the cold, alienating ideology. Just as
mainstream science and much non-biblical religion reject
difference and see humanity as one race with common
origins, a biblical fundamentalist view holds to an
ancient notion that divides us into a deity's less or
more favored races. The political, economic and
psychological burdens of maintaining such older belief
systems are at the root of a global crisis. In an all too
real sense, we continue struggles with believers in
immaterial legend and fable, while reality demands that
we wake up and face a material world threatened by our
wasteful and destructive divisions. These ancient belief
systems might be beneficial if their humanitarian
messages of equality for all took precedence over their
patriarchal teachings of the godly superiority of only
some. We face failure as long as we continue to pay only
halfhearted lip service to the wise words of their most
loving prophets, while we pay wholehearted debt service
to the false words of their most hateful profiteers .
Human suffering and brutality are a sad part of our
history, but we needn't mythologize their experience or
make them special; rather, we need to understand that
they impede our development . We can learn from our most
terrible mistakes, but not if we fetishize and treat them
as unique, almost divorced from history rather than
representing a terrible example of our worst behaviors,
practiced in the selfish, short sighted ignorance that
continues to rule our relations. Our bloody past and
present make it clear that It is possible to slaughter
hundreds, thousands, even millions of people, without an
extermination plan or gas chambers.
History is full of wholesale massacres, of people being
regarded as worse than insects or rodents, and
barbarically murdered in horrendous acts of brutality.
Some of these were perpetrated over many years, some over
a few weeks, some a few days, and some, instantly. During
the same war that killed so many european jews, the
cities of Dresden and Tokyo, among many others, were
reduced to ashes in firestorms that killed tens of
thousands of people in a matter of minutes. These poor
souls were indeed, burned alive, and there was no need to
deliver them to death camps or crematoria; the crematoria
were delivered to them. Yet these and other brutal acts
of mass murder were written off as excusable acts of war
that killed 'the enemy', said enemy deserving such a fate
for being part and parcel of the war. Had the outcome of
that war been different, how many allied generals would
have been tried for these mass murders, and been executed
as war criminals?
Hitler did not want war
with England. This has been documented many
times. Moreover, the Allies knew from reading the
German Air Force signals, which they had broken
on May 26, 1940, that Hitler had given orders
that NO British civilian towns and cities were to
be bombed. Hitler was very clear on insisting
that London was to be off-limits to German
bombers. The German Air Force was allowed to bomb
ports, harbors and dock yards, but NOT the
civilian population as
such. This order stayed in force for almost a
year; we know this from the Allied captured
German documents and the German archives.
However, on August 25, 1940, Churchill gave the
order to the British Air Force to go and bomb
Berlin. Although the Chief of Staff of the
British Air Force warned him that if he bombed
Berlin, Hitler would lift the order about not
bombing British towns, Churchill disregarded that
warning; the idea was to provoke Hitler to strike
back. At 9:15 that morning Churchill personally
ordered the bombing of Berlin. That night, Berlin
was bombed by 100 bombers - yet Hitler didn't
make a
counter-move. Churchill ordered another raid on
Berlin. And another. And another. There were also
raids on Freiburg and Wilhelmshaven. These
bombing raids went on until finally on September
4, 1940 Hitler made that famous speech in the
Sports Palace in Berlin during which he is
supposed to have made the comment: "I shall
wipe out their cities." ("Ich werde
ihre Städte ausradieren.")
School children are now told, both here and
overseas, about the Hitler speech. They are not
told, however, how this speech came about and who
was bombing first - and why. They are not told
how Churchill set out deliberately to provoke the
bombing of his own capital in order to get the
German (and English) war spirit aroused. Michael
Santomauro |
Why does one horrible slaughter
receive an unending stream of commemorations and
reparations, while hundreds of others are barely a drip
in the brain pan of humanity? Why does the holocaust loom
so large, and yet serve as a rationale for the
brutalization of a Semitic-people(Arabs) who had
absolutely nothing to do with nazis or europe? And who
can certainly not be guilty of anti-Semitism, In as much
as they are Semites themselves? Could a better
understanding of what happened to the Jews of europe, and
of the underlying causes that brought about fascism, help
the world to better understand itself?
It can't possibly hurt us to learn what was at the root
of the nazis blind hatred of communism, democracy and
judaism, and why they linked those hatreds, rather than
continue accepting ridiculous notions that reduce world
history to perverse psychosomatic disorders. What role
did material events play in the creation of national
socialism in Germany, and how widely was it supported by
other nations? Contrary to simplistic belief, which has
it that the world instantly opposed the demonic evil of
the nazis, many western powers were quite fond of the
nazi's rabid
anti-communism and their strengthening of German finance
capital . It is possible to learn more about a terrible
episode of history without denigrating those who
suffered, but also by not making a totally different kind
of human out of them, thereby perpetuating a dangerous
myth of original difference when we most need to
acknowledge that we are all members of the same human
race.
Fear of present victimization because of past history,
whether based on fact or fiction, is not healthy for any
individual or group of human beings. Rising above our
past mistakes, our legends and our
superstitions in order to deal with real problems can
contribute to growth in knowledge and assurance of a
future possibility for all of humanity. That assurance is
a necessity for the success of the human race, and not
just one nation, sect, religion or clan .
Seeing the rest of humanity as historically bent on
persecuting and eventually murdering all jews is hardly
the healthiest way to sustain religious, ethnic, national
or personal survival. One has to major in the
inhumanities to entertain such dreadful thoughts. When
carried for generations, they cannot help but lead to
more suspicion, misunderstanding and divisions which help
create the inhuman mental and physical horror that was
the reality of the Jews in Europe, and is the reality of
the Palestinian people now. Bigotry and murder do not
need commemorative death tolls or special killing machine
techniques to make them worse or better; they need to
stop.
The revisioning of the holocaust might help israel,
Palestine and judaism itself by confronting
contradictions based on *ancient beliefs* which
have no place in the modern world, and which help create
misunderstanding and murder the longer they are accepted.
Controversies involving which war, which mass murder or
which act of totalitarian brutality was worse than
another can only make it seem that some were better than
others. But it is all acts of brutality that must be seen
as the problem , and not just one in isolation, if we are
to arrive at a solution.
*ancient beliefs* in
the picture below and this interesting letter
seen recently in a newspaper:
"The article "British election may
serve to redefine war options "(May5) is
entirely right to draw attention to the broader
government implications of the decision to embark
on a war in Iraq, because central to the process
by which the British came to find themselves
committed to the war was a ROYAL PREROGATIVE, and
the abuse of it by an Executive in England. This
is the power that for centuries has enabled kings
and queens of England to wage war without the
full and proper authority of a British
Parliament, and all that has happened in recent
years is that the potential for abuse that the
prerogative presents has passed from one address
in London to another. Ricard Ede,Liverpool" |
If we do not learn from history, it is said that we are
condemned to repeat it, and that has been the case with
the Jewish experience of one war, and the resultant
Palestinian suffering that could lead to a greater war .
Coming to grips with what was called the final solution
could bring about confrontation with what could be
humanity's final problem of racial and ethnic hatreds
which are used to help perpetuate ideologies of
domination. We need a peaceful 'final solution' in
confronting the greatest problem humanity has ever faced.
Nuclear and biological weapons have replaced the more
primitive bloody tools of the old political testaments
and while we have seen what those weapons could do, we
have not yet fully realized the lesson of their creation.
They are products of age old biblical inhumanity, brought
to modern technological perfection in exercising mass
murder in post biblical fashion. We have to become a
civilized people and learn to work together , before we
revert to primitive savagery and literally blow ourselves
apart.
The holocaust was representative of the darkest side of
humanity, but unfortunately, it still covers many with
its shadow. Bringing light to such darkness involves much
more than rethinking one episode of history, but given
its enormous impact on collective consciousness, this one
issue could have an affect on many more. They may seem an
unlikely source, but holocaust revisionists could help
bring about an enlightenment that enables us to see
through inherited doctrines of ignorance and bigotry,
kept alive by political and biblical systems of
superstition which contribute to furthering the danger to
humanity.
Email www.raptureready.com
"The rapture is a racket," writes
Barbara R. Rossing in her recently published book
The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in
the Book of Revelation (Westview Press,
2004). Rossing, a New Testament scholar and
an associate professor at the Lutheran School of
Theology at Chicago, maintains that the Rapture
is a fraud of monumental proportions, as well as
a disturbing way to instill fear in people.
"Whether prescribing a violent script for
Israel or survivalism in the United States, this
theology distorts God's vision for the
world." Rossing writes, "The Rapture
voyeuristically glorifies violence and war. [...]
This theology is not biblical." |
Confronting the real tragedy of what was done in the
past, and the role it has played in furthering human
suffering and injustice in the present, will be necessary
for us to end such suffering in the future. The hateful
anti-Semitism that was at the core of nazi treatment of
jews cannot be forgotten, but it shouldn't be remembered
by developing a ridiculous philo-semitism that places one
event, nation or people above critical reproach. Like the
Zionists and Nazis who agreed that Jews were different
from everyone else, this is either/or dualism at its
worst. Just as past bigotry and brutalizing of Jews has
scarred humanity, so does present bigotry and brutalizing
of Palestinians disfigure us all.
And just as we demythologize the American story and
create a more hopeful future by doing so, we need to
demythologize the mass injustice in Europe, and the mass
injustice it brought about in the Middle East. Two wrongs
do not make a right, any more than two lies can make a
truth.
And while the truth may not set us absolutely free, it
could certainly help us move closer to relative freedom.
Copyright (c) 2005 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
This text may be used and shared in accordance with the
fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be
archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided
that the author is notified and no fee is charged for
access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of
this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the
consent of the author
frank scott
email: frank@marin.cc.ca.us
225 laurel place, san rafael ca. 94901
(415)457 2415 cell (415)847 4105
|