Opinion Editorials, October 2007
|
|
War of the Words: The Holocaust Excuse to Commit Mass Murder
By Frank Scott
ccun.org, October 20, 2007
During an exceptionally rude introduction of President
Ahmadinejad of
Iran, a university president announced that the holocaust was the most
documented event in history. While this overstatement was in keeping
with most of his remarks, it provokes a question: exactly what do we
mean when we say “the holocaust”?
When someone is called a “holocaust denier”, what
is being denied?
Confusion over those words is being used to cloud minds and threaten
another war in the middle east, once again for reasons that cannot be
substantiated in the material world but are simply political excuses to
commit mass murder.
Those who express doubt about some key aspects of the
story of Nazi
persecution of Jews in Europe during the second world war are often
imprisoned or face threats to their very lives. We witnessed the
spectacle of a head of state invited to speak at an American university
and introduced with the most scurrilous language imaginable, all
provoked by that leader’s alleged “denial” of the holocaust, along
with
his supposed existential threat to the Zionist state of Israel. And when
speaking of one, the other must be addressed, since there is no
rationale for the Zionist state of Israel without “the holocaust”. There
is no question about the dreadful treatment of European Jews by
the Nazis, their racist persecution , their deportation from homelands
to concentration and labor camps where tens of thousands died under the
most deplorable conditions . Nor is there any question that many
suffered massacres outside of camps , whether conducted by Germans or
others acting under their rule. These things, as the crude academic
claimed, are well documented. And there is little doubt about them,
except for honest questions about the actual death toll.
But critics wonder about the centrally organized and
secret plan to
annihilate all the Jews of Europe, and the use of mass extermination gas
chambers to murder hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people. No
such devices were ever found, and verification of their existence
depends entirely on stories told by traumatized survivors , confessions
made under severe stress if not outright torture, and photographs of
empty buildings or reconstructed ruins said to have once been used as
gas chambers.
Consider whether we would uncritically accept the
reality of America’s
ugly racist history of lynching, with no more evidence than hearing
stories of the horror told by miraculous survivors, and seeing photos of
trees alleged to have once had bodies hanging from them.
Any critical person can wonder, but millions of us have been so shocked
at films of the terrible conditions of the liberated camps, and
especially the piles of emaciated dead bodies, that little thought is
given to asking how those terrible scenes of suffering and death could
have had anything to do with gas chambers, let alone crematoria. And if
a plan was afoot to secretly murder millions and cremate their bodies to
remove evidence, why and how could so many have been left plainly
exposed to public view?
The near total physical breakdown of Germany near the
war’s end never
seems to enter consciousness as possible reason for some of the drastic
scenes revealed at those camps. While many German cities were devastated
by bombing, with their citizens reduced to homeless refugees often near
starvation, should we imagine that under such conditions prison camps,
which were dreadful places to begin with, would somehow be able to
furnish adequate food, shelter and medical care to all inmates?
When President Ahmadinejad referred to myth
surrounding the story, he
was not denying that Jews suffered, anymore than holocaust revisionists
- who are slurred as “deniers” - make such a charge. But they, and he,
and thousands the world over who have read critical works that barely
see the light of day in the west, join in questioning vital aspects of
that story. Bigots who smear them with nasty labels are playing with
words, and in lethal fashion.
Anyone who would deny the racial madness of the Nazi
ethnic cleansing of
European Jews might be an idiot, or simply consumed by hate. But those
who deny the right to question the existence of gas chambers or other
details of the story, and vilify those who dare to do so are either
ignorant, or more likely, driven by a more dangerous hate. Anything
forbidden to be questioned must be held suspect by thinking people, and
the more that criticism is suppressed, the more dangerous the
possibilities for the world, and not just the suppressors.
Ahmadinejad repeatedly says that whatever crime Europeans
committed against Jews is no reason for the terrible persecution and
suffering inflicted upon the Palestinians, who were guilty of nothing.
Most of the world agrees with him, as do many in the west, though hardly
anyone in American politics will risk stating that obvious fact. The power
exerted by the Israel lobby is such that even when a former president, or
establishment scholars site the moral injustice and the threat to our
nation posed by one sided policies in the middle east, they are
slandered as anti Semites , the way that revisionists are smeared as
deniers.
While thousands of Jews in Iran are apparently living
without fear,
thousands of Jews in America have been led to believe that Ahmadinejad
threatens them with another holocaust. That is not just irrational , but
dangerous for all humanity. This situation is being used to help provoke
a further bloody war in the Middle East, but reason must prevail over
fanatic beliefs and psychotic fears or all of us will suffer . The war
over these words and their clear meaning must not be allowed to
perpetuate more injustice, and worse, threaten a global disaster .
Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears in the Coastal Post, The Independent Monitor, on numerous web sites and on his shared blog at:
http://legalienate.blogspot.com
frank scott email: frankscott@comcast.net
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
||||||
