Subject: JUICE Holocaust 11
Date:    Wed, 10 Jun 1998 00:48:46 +0000
To:      "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>

From:          JUICE Administration <juice@wzo.org.il>
To:            holocaust@wzo.org.il
Subject:       JUICE Holocaust 11

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                  World Zionist Organization
                Jewish University in CyberspacE
          juice@wzo.org.il         birnbaum@wzo.org.il 
                     http://www.wzo.org.il 
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Course: Meanings of the Holocaust
Lecture:  11/12
Lecturer: Elly Dlin

Lecture 11: ANTISEMITISM AND HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM

On 4 September 1997 three bombs exploded in the crowded Ben Yehuda
pedestrian mall in Jerusalem killing 4 and injuring 200.  The last lines of
the newspaper article that appeared in the next day's JERUSALEM POST, under
the title <An Ugly Deja Vu>, were:

As helicopters hovered overhead and stores in the area closed, a young girl
stood against a police vehicle, quietly reciting Psalms.  <It's not a
pedestrian mall> a young man said passing by her, <it's Auschwitz>.

What exactly is the deja vu that the journalist felt?  Was this act of
terror a Holocaust?  Presumably neither the journalist writing the article
nor the <young> man that he quotes were actually inmates in Auschwitz while
it still functioned as the largest Death Camp in the Third Reich.  A
symbolic connection is being felt, an echo of history, a sense of being in a
situation that <feels> somehow familiar: as in Ben Yehuda Street so it was
in Auschwitz - Jews are once again being murdered for no reason other than
they were born Jewish.

But does the Auschwitz reference hold beyond this lone thread?  Can it be
posited that these two situations are largely analogous?  

I think it quite obvious that they are not!  The Jerusalem bombing took
place in a sovereign and independent State that possesses an army and a
police force which can defend it and respond aggressively to threats of all
kinds.  YES it is terrorism but NO, it is neither a Auschwitz nor is it mass
murder.  Terror is an unfortunate fact of life that exists today in many
places in the world: in London, Algeria, Ecuador, Oklahoma City and in the
subways of Paris and Tokyo.  It is very difficult indeed to stop a small and
determined group of terrorists bent on suicide, and the losses that they
inflict are painful and tragic, but they are isolated and individual.  Mass
murders of thousands and genocides of even greater magnitude DO continue to
take place in today's world but we Jews are no longer the victims.

True, the bombings in Jerusalem were intended to kill Jews solely because
they are Jews.  It was a clear act of antisemitism just like the bombing of
the Chabad Synagogue in Moscow 2 weeks ago (mid-May 1998) was undoubtedly
motivated by antisemitism.  But these are not Holocausts.  MAVET AL KIDDUSH
HASHEM (or dying in the sanctification of G-d's name) is a common thread in
the long history of the persecution of Jews.  Throughout history there have
been Jewish martyrs who have died for their beliefs.  The Holocaust is a
prominent and certainly extreme example of this type of persecution but that
is not to say that there are not major differences between it and other acts
of antisemitism nor can we imply that every antisemitic act is a Holocaust.
The very uniqueness of the Holocaust (lecture 1) and its particular and
complex relationship with traditional antisemitism (lecture 2) have been
raised earlier in this series.

THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITIONS:  WHO ARE TODAY'S ANTISEMITES?

Often this question is clouded by a problem of definitions and by partial or
skewed information that may lead to incorrect conclusions.  For example:
some 10 years ago or more an arson torched the synagogue in my home town in
Canada.  The initial feeling was that a heinous antisemitic act had
occurred, an unprecedented assault on the local Jewish community.  That is
until the perpetrator was caught.  A mentally unstable drifter, he claimed
that G-d expressed to him His Divine dissatisfaction as to the ways in which
He was being worshipped.  This man felt a Divine calling to destroy Houses
of Worship in order to wake people up and bring them to true religious
observance.  The perpetrator admitted to having set fires to Catholics and
Protestants churches and that he now had torched one of the Jew's.  Was this
antisemitism?  Apparently not.  Rather than singling Jews out for special
treatment this nut was  actually expressing a twisted kind of
egalitarianism.  For him Jews were no different than anybody else and he was
obliged to destroy their Houses of Worship also.

A second example: During the 1982 War in Lebanon a bomb went off in a
diamond district in Belgium.  The insurance company fought against the claim
for compensation on the basis of a clause in their policy that precluded
payment for <acts of War>.  Was that antisemitism?  Maybe.  If the damaged
business had been owned by Catholics would the company have responded
differently?  Would it have linked the act to violence in Northern Ireland?
Or are their a special set of rules solely for Jews?  Is a Jewish-owned
business in Europe automatically to be considered a legitimate target for
combatants from the Middle East?  And what if the Jewish owner is a Satmar
Hassid and a strident opponent of Zionism?   Are all Diaspora Jews
automatically to be considered combat  soldiers in the Israeli Army,
directly and personally responsible for the invasion of Lebanon?  

Yet on the other hand, was the insurance company really being antisemitic or
was it merely exercising sharp business practices - trying to use any
loophole to avoid paying out a large premium. Maybe they were making this
argument without being aware of the possible antisemitic overtones but
simply because it might help the company to save money.  And if the tactic
were to fail then the payment would be made - no hard feelings, nothing
personal, just business. 

These situations are frequently ambiguous, in the greyish shades of
interpretation.  For instance, antisemites condemn Jews for being clannish
and for engaging in unfair business practices that favour their fellow Jews.
Well I grew up in a Canadian city that was overwhelmingly Christian and yet
our family doctor, lawyer,  and pharmacist were all Jews.  There were plenty
of car garages in our neighbourhood but we always serviced our vehicle at a
downtown shop that was Jewish-owned  It was considerably less convenient but
we felt obliged to give the business <to one of our own>.

Antisemites claim that Jews conspire together and have secret ties with one
another.  A gentleman who heard me lecture some years back told of loosing
his wallet, cards and money in a city in which he knew no one.  While still
at the airport he approached a person that, in his words <looked Jewish>
(don't antisemites make the outrageous claim that they can always tell who
the Jews are?) and explained the situation to him.  The man, a complete
stranger, felt the bond of a fellow-Jew in trouble, gave him money and
helped him.  Would the stranger have reacted the same way if he had been
approached by an African-American or a Vietnamese Buddhist?  I doubt it.
The slogan <WE ARE ONE> was not coined by antisemites but by the mainstream
organized Jewish world.

Is it antisemitism when Dr. Robert Lowe of the Southern Baptist Convention
says that G-d doesn't hear the prayers of the Jews or alternatively, is it
his fundamentalist Christian beliefs?  (Or both?)  Beliefs that have their
parallels among fundamentalists of all stripes.  Do all Jews believe that
G-d listens in the same way to their prayers as He does to Christians, or to
female Reconstructionist Lesbian Rabbis?

Some of the State of Israel's strongest supporters in America are devout
Christians who pray for the conversion and disappearance of the Jewish
people - more shades of grey.

Yet emphasizing the ambiguous should not cause us to ignore the real
antisemites; recognizing shades of grey should not blind us to the black
that definitely does exists.  There are fringe groups of wholly committed
antisemites in most every country.  They are still few in number but they
can do some real damage to property and lives.  Societies today are
undoubtedly strong enough to keep them on the fringe and to limit their
damage but things can change, there are no ironclad guarantees for the
future.  Hitler was the 7th member to join the executive of the Nazi Party;
20 years later the Second World War began.  Now not every small group of 7
crazies causes a series of event that leads to the deaths of tens of
millions of people, yet we ignore the potential threat at our peril.

HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM

Labels are very important in the war over memory that is being fought by the
antisemites.  Their adoption of the term <revisionism> is a bid for
legitimacy where none is deserved, just as their use of the term
<exterminationists> for everyone else is an attempt to discredit and
denigrate those who know the truth of what actually happened in the Holocaust.

The first revisionists were those historians writing in the 1920s who took
sharp issue with the War Guilt Clause (article 219 of the Versailles Treaty)
that assigned complete and total responsibility to the Germans for the
outbreak of the First World War.  There are even some linkages between the
1920s revisionists and this current group of antisemites that are more
accurately labeled <Holocaust deniers>. 

What are their themes?  Firstly the Holocaust deniers seek the
rehabilitation of the Third Reich and its leaders  By stressing the positive
aspects of their policies and downplaying or ignoring the heart of the
regime - its antisemitism and its crimes against humanity - they are
suggesting that there was much about the Nazis to be admired and emulated.
Secondly it is a platform upon which to reshape societies, to attack
parliamentary democracy and to reject pluralism, tolerance and diversity.
It is a xenophobic attack against minorities in a bid to build a closed and
<racially pure> society.  Thirdly, Holocaust deniers are open opponents of
more than the specific policies of this or that Israeli government.  They
reject the very legitimacy of the State of Israel itself and reveal their
antisemitism in the passion of their hatred.  Just as the term
<antisemitism> was invented in the latter part of the 19th century to
elevate it above simple Jew-hatred and to give it an <objective> and
<scientific> basis, so <Holocaust revisionism> is nothing more than the
newest channel for  the oldest hatred in the world - antisemitism.

ARE ALL HOLOCAUST-DENIERS ANTISEMITES?

I think the only possible conclusion is a positive one.  For when you ask a
Holocaust-denier: if these event did not really happen, how did they come to
be believed so universally?  S\he can only answers: because the Jews control
the world.  They control the press, the schools, the governments and
Hollywood.  Jews manipulated, manufactured and distorted all of the volumes
and volumes of evidence that were presented in the Trials of Major War
Criminals after the War.  The Holocaust deniers must accept 1 of 2 possible
positions.  Either the judges at Nuremberg were all consciously part of the
International Jewish Conspiracy to deceive the world of the truth or, even
more nefarious and dangerous, the Jewish conspiracy is so powerful and so
subtle that it entraps and controls all of these innocents to do its bidding
without them even being aware of how they are being manipulated.  And
equally hoodwinked are the thousands of teachers who teach about the
Holocaust in schools, and the university professors and curriculum
specialists who write materials for the dozens of States and school
districts that teach the Holocaust to young people.  They are all part of
this omnipotent and omniscient lie - the greatest (and one might add, the
most successful) hoax of the 20th century..

Someone who believes with a total faith (and in the absence of any real
supportive evidence) not only that the Jews STRIVE to control the world but
that they INDEED DO manipulate it and everyone and everything in it can only
be described as an antisemite.  Therefore all Holocaust deniers are antisemites.

HOW SERIOUS IS THE DANGER?

Historians have tremendous difficulties simply trying to understand the
past; their record in predicting the future is even less sterling.  Yet in
this series for JUICE I think it important to at least give consideration to
this question.  

A look at the evidence suggests that the dangers today to Jews are more
serious in countries where they have a substantial presence (like France)
than where they hardly exist (like Poland), and where the antisemitic
tradition is strong (like Russia) rather than were it is relative weak (like
North America).

The threat is greater from closed societies were access to information is
severely fettered than it is in those places where knowledge is open to all
who seek it.  Despots who think in terms of monolithic ideologies tend to
seek singular answers to complex issues and to show a predilection to
accepting conspiracy theories of hidden enemies and invisible forces.
Especially powerful are situations in which hatred of <the others> is used
to divert the population from its real problems and to unite and transcend
their differences by focusing on the scapegoat.  When the singular answer,
conspiracy theory and perceived enemy is all one and is all part of an old
historical tradition (antisemitism, the longest hatred) then it may appear
to have a degree of credibility to some.   

It should also be noted that the specific danger towards Jews is reduced
when there are more prominent and preferred targets to persecute (Turks,
Vietnamese, black immigrants) and by the presence of the independent State
of Israel which is committed to defending Jewish interests around the world
and has taken action far from its own borders to rescue Jews (of a military
nature such as at Entebbe, Uganda in 1976 and the airlifts of immigrants
from Iran, the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia).  

In a series of presentations that try to understand something of why the
Holocaust happened it may be instructive to take a moment and to speculate
about a case in which a Holocaust does NOT happen.   Jews in South Africa
were never fully accepted in the core groups who held power in that country.
Racially-based quotas and population controls regulated not only entry into
South Africa from outside of its international borders but were also very
present within all levels of societal structures.  Fascism, militarism,
anti-foreigners, Christian fundamentalism, and also strains of pure
antisemitism were strong in South Africa in the 1930s and 1940s.  Yet a
Holocaust does not happen.  Why not?

Part of the explanation is that National Socialism is something else other
than fascism and militarism.  Nazism is fundamentally foreign to that regime
especially when England is at war with Germany.  Racial antisemitism may
have been accepted by a certain group of South Africans but several
prominent political leaders spoke out powerfully and decisively against
antisemitism (for example, Smuts as Minister of Justice in November 1933).
In addition the government took actions that clearly marked off dangerous
antisemitic behaviour as unacceptable (the 1934 Aberdeen Greyshirts Trial in
Port Elizabeth).  In contradistinction to Hitler's antisemitism, the
antisemitism of Malan's Purified National Party was decidedly more rational
and instrumental.  In conformity with more important political exigencies,
and when it ceased to serve his interests, he was able to drop his
antisemitism just as easily as he had picked it up.

An obvious factor is the presence of a much larger population who are the
main object of white concerns - in the case of South Africa, blacks.  

In addition, the South African core groups both held traditions that worked
against murderous antisemitism: on the one hand English tolerance and
democratic traditions and on the other Afrikaans Calvinists who were
intimately familiar and positively disposed to the Jewish Bible and who saw
themselves as enlightened pioneers struggling to bring redemption to their
Promised Land.  They also held an innate pro-Zionism that tempered any
anti-Jewish sentiments.

All of this goes a ways in explaining how a Holocaust was avoided and, in
its mirror image, how the absence of these mitigating factors contributed to
a dangerous potential being actualized in Nazi Germany.

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