 |
|
|
Jewish World Review Feb. 15, 2000 /9 Adar I, 5760
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT that the Holocaust Establishment had done its worst to
trivialize the shoah, put it in competition with other massacres in the
victimization marketplace, and make the world loathe the very word, something
comes along to make you sit up and take notice. In last Wednesday's New York
Times, 25 of our great and good, including Elie Wiesel, Emile Fackenheim,
Abraham Foxman, and Franklin Littell, put their signatures to a bold appeal
to the President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad.
Would you ask him to stop supporting Hizbullah's terror campaign against your
fellow Jews in Israel? Would you ask him to instruct his diplomats at least
to shake hands with Barak's diplomats, considering that the Barak government
is doing its best to trade the Golan Heights for nothing in particular?
Might you suggest that he please consider not shelling women and children in
Kiryat Shmona, Israel, where 36 civilians have died and 339 been wounded?
How about a plea to release the people of Lebanon from his occupation of
their land? Or ending his policy of imprisoning and murdering his political
opponents? Might he be asked to ease up on the secret police's grip on
Syrian life? Ending his quest to acquire weapons of mass destruction? How
about an apology for killing 20,000 innocent civilians in Hamas in 1982?
Like Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, these worthies appear on the crime
scene-so concerned with showing off their competence that they fail to notice
another dead body in the closet. Has our obsession with the Holocaust
obliterated every other consideration? Even the principle for which the
Holocaust has become so professionalized-that the Jewish people be allowed to
survive in their own homes?
We've reached a milestone, I believe, marked by this advertisement.
Holocaust-denial-denial has on this occasion finally surpassed in importance
whether actual Jews survive. I may be extreme-for I believe, like Rabin did,
and as Barak did until he became an unpopular politician, that anyone who
would "give up the Golan would be guilty of sacrificing Israel's security."
So I would prefer to surrender the Holocaust-and keep the Golan Heights. And
in a very real sense, it is the opposite choice which our wise men and women
propose. Swallow anything from Assad-except Holocaust-denial! Never mind
that the position of Tishrun may be utterly concocted.
The Assad regime is waging effective psychological warfare against what we
have proclaimed as our weak point. The good burghers of Calais who signed
the Times' ad last week are casualties of this war. So is Tom Friedman, the
mind of the New York Times on foreign policy, who tried to psychoanalyze the
regime last week. He said "The Syrian regime self-righteously insists that
Israel give back the Golan, without even deigning to shake hands with Israeli
negotiators, precisely because this Syrian regime has lied to itself about
what it did in 1967 and about what it is today -- a brutal dictatorship that
doesn't even shake hands with its own people." No, Tom, the Syrians aren't
lying to themselves. They're lying to you! And their lies, thanks to our
Holocaust-hysteria, are far more effective than the Syrian's rusting weapons.
They aim to irritate, to draw Jewish eyes away from the ball, and to
unbalance. They have succeeded admirably in their aims.
The Holocaust establishment has finally established that the safety of living
Jews is morally equivalent to an argument with Holocaust-deniers who, for all
we know, aren't even sincere about their denial-but are certainly in earnest
about their desire to destroy the Zionist entity and get the better of it in
any diplomatic negotiation.
I think it's time to say it aloud: There are things in the world that are
worse than denying the
Inspector Clouseau of the Yad Vashem Gendarmerie:
The Case of the Wily Dictator
Inspector Abe (Foxman) is hot
on the trail. But to where?
By Sam Schulman
Suppose you were invited to take your place on the list of signatories (which
you won't be. You're not good enough!). Now, let's say that writing a check
to the Sulzbergers for upwards of 40 grand were to attract the undivided
attention of Assad-which it wouldn't. What would you say to him, if you knew
he would read the 300 words you might write?
But the chance to ask Assad these questions would not be interesting to you
if you are a Holocaust professional, like Saul Friedman, Zsusanna Ozsvath, or
Michael Berenbaum. What rouses such men and women to take hold of the ends
of the earth that the wicked might be shaken out of it? It's not murder, not
terror, not war, but holocaust-denial. President Assad has allowed Tishrun,
the official Syrian government newspaper to call the Holocaust "a myth." And
- what's more-this isn't the first time! The signatories of the letter are
awfully sore at President Assad-so angry that they don't hesitate to denounce
this outrage "in the strongest possible terms."
If I were opposed to
the survival of a Jewish state, and I were clever enough to know that these
people are smart, tough, and well-armed, but if you tease them about the
Holocaust it demoralizes them and unfocusses them-then I bloody well would
proclaim that the Holocaust never happened, whatever I actually believed.
The 'sanctity of historical truth' is not very high on the agenda of people
who wish to kill you and obliterate your homeland.
JWR contributor Sam Schulman is deputy editor of Taki's Top Drawer, appearing in New York
Press, and was formerly publisher of Wigwag and a professor of English at
Boston University. You may contact him by clicking here.
