Opinion Editorials, October 2015

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Netanyahu Is a History Revisionist

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has attracted criticism for an incendiary speech in which he accused the Palestinian grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, of “inspiring the Holocaust”. Critics accuse Netanyahu of trivialising the Holocaust by attributing the impetus for Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe to the grand mufti.

In his speech Netanyahu described a meeting between Haj Amin al-Husseini and Hitler in November 1941. “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here [to Palestine].’” According to Netanyahu, Hitler then asked: “What should I do with them?” and the mufti replied: “Burn them.” Netanyahu chose not to reveal how he had uncovered the transcript of the conversation.

This shift in Israeli historical perspective, illuminated by Netanyahu, is timely and welcome. In recent days it has become clear that Palestine is not willing to accept the Zionist presence on its land any longer and this feeling is more than understandable. Time is overdue for the Jews to move on and invent a new phantasmic promised land.  Germany is obviously the ideal candidate. Angela Merkel loves immigration and she is probably willing to take a few million Israeli humus eaters to balance the victims of Ziocon wars who are fleeing into her Germanic haven.

Berlin has recently become the new Jerusalem for the Israelis. Thousands of young Israelis have moved to Berlin in recent years in a migration wave that in Hebrew is called, ‘Olim le-Berlin’ (Ascending to Berlin). Yesterday PM Netanyahu joined the call of the Israeli youth, and he has finally vindicated Hitler and the Germans. It seems that actually it is the Palestinians who should be blamed for the Shoah. In the Hebraic sphere they like to keep the equation simple – the eternal victim (the Jew) is the constant factor, the anti-Semite is the variable element. The anti Semite keeps changing, it never stops changing.

 Some boring Israeli historians are not yet willing to follow Netanyahu’s revisionist shift. They still insist that maintaining German guilt is essential. Professor Dan Michman, head of the Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar-Ilan University said, “while Hitler did indeed meet the mufti this happened after the Final Solution began.” I am always confused by Jewish scholarship and the way Jewish scholars fiddle with facts to make them fit ever-changing Jewish interests. According to the Zionist Holocaust religion, the “Final solution” was first established in the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. But Hitler met the Mufti in November 1941.

Alternatively, try to follow to the depth of Israeli scholarship. Professor Dina Porat, told the Israeli news website Ynet, that Netanyahu’s claims were “incorrect”.  Her profound argument:  “You cannot say that it was the mufti who gave Hitler the idea to kill or burn Jews. It’s not true. Their meeting occurred after a series of events that point to this.” As I pointed out in ‘The Wandering Who?’, there is no such a thing as Jewish history. Instead its history is the institutional concealment of Jewish shame that results in an unabashed, inconsistent, kosher zigzag.

MK Itzik Shmuli called on Netanyahu to apologise to Holocaust victims.  “This is a great shame, a prime minister of the Jewish state at the service of Holocaust deniers.” Thankfully we now posses a very effective litmus tests for Holocaust deniers. If Netanyahu is the Holocaust denier that MK Shmuli suggests, he will soon express his support for Jeremy Corbyn and our revolutionary Labour party. I am not actually holding my breath.

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2015/10/21/hot-off-the-press-netanyahu-is-a-history-revisionist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ju1w-iDR0o

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Israel Palestine Conflict Is Now A Religious War

By Gilad Atzmon

 Two days ago I wrote that the Israeli Palestinian conflict has become a religious war and that our understanding of this battle must evolve to fit the new reality. My observation seemed reasonable to many. As soon as I published my paper, Press TV called and asked me to comment on the topic on air. Many Palestinians contacted me to thank me for saying what they also believed to be an accurate description of their situation on the ground.

 However, some of my friends and supporters, including a few Diaspora Palestinians, were genuinely offended and disturbed by my reading of the situation. Their argument was that the Palestinians’ claim to their land doesn’t require a religious authority to legitimize it. Another argument was that viewing the conflict as a religious battle is ‘not good for the solidarity movement.’

 Of course, I also believe that the Palestinians’ right to their land is ethically and universally grounded and doesn’t need any further justification, religious or secular. The transformation of the conflict into a religious war wasn’t caused by the Palestinians searching for an authority to approve their cause. While I do not much care about the ‘solidarity movement’ and its ‘interests,’ I do care deeply about the subject of Palestinian solidarity i.e., the Palestinians and their prospects for living on the land that belongs to them.

 A religious conflict is one in which the actions and rhetoric of the conflict is dominated by religious ideologies, argumentation and symbolism. This doesn’t mean that all or even most of the people involved in the conflict are religious or religiously motivated. It is likely that the majority of Israelis oppose the relentless assaults by messianic settlers on Al Aqsa mosque that led to the recent escalation. Yet these assaults by hard-core religiously motivated Jewish activists have now shaped the conflict.  And this does not apply only to the Israelis. It seems that Al Aqsa mosque has become the symbolic unifier for the Palestinians. And this unification has been a positive development for the Palestinians. While it appeared for a while that Israel had managed to break the Palestinians and their ability to struggle as one people, the current Jewish assault on Al Aqsa has united the Palestinians and Arabs and not just the Muslims.

 But what about this development scares the solidarity activists? Why are our left solidarity merchants afraid of Islam and religion in general? Is it that hard to see that the Shaid who shouts Allah hu Akbar while committing martyrdom is religiously driven? One devoted activist wrote to me that defending Islam is totally impossible in Jewish America. “Tough,” was my answer to her -- those who support Palestine have to recognize Palestinians for what they are rather than trying to fit them into ADL or AIPAC’s guidelines. But I think that the problem is far wider and deeper.

 If I am correct and the conflict has now transformed into a religious war (and I am always correct), then we can bin the entire futile terminology that was imposed on us by Jewish progressive activists. ‘Colonialism,’ ‘Settler colonialism,’ ‘Apartheid,’ ‘One State/Two States ’ ‘Zionism,’ etc.’ may as well be totally irrelevant to an understanding of the conflict. All this terminology conveys is the false image that the conflict is of a political nature and due a political resolution at an imaginary point in the future. But unlike political disputes, religious conflicts are never resolved by political means; at most, they are suppressed for a while.

 If the Israeli Palestinian conflict is a religious war then scrutiny of the Old Testament, the Talmud and other Judaic texts may reveal to us what the Jewish State is in its current form and where it is aiming. Armageddon is clearly a valid answer. This is the answer offered by the Jewish settlers who assault Al Aqsa. A state of total war is their mission. Not exactly an ecumenical peaceful empathic world view craving for universal tolerance and reconciliation. For the fanatical Jews who raid the Temple Mount, coexistence is not an option. For them celebration of choseness is the true interpretation of the Judaic call. I wouldn’t argue that this is the only interpretation of Judaism, but this is certainly the Judaic interpretation that shapes the conflict at the moment.  

 And if the Israeli Palestinian conflict is indeed a religious war, we must consider changing our approach. Rather than engage in cosmetic and polite activism that makes some Jews feel comfortable, we must openly call for a peaceful dissolution of the Jewish State. This cancerous element has destabilized the entire Middle East and is the greatest single threat to world peace. This British imperial experiment must come to an end immediately.

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2015/10/12/op7gcrtkwdxga74jyxrxm85o9kgeou

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editor@aljazeerah.info & editor@ccun.org