Here's an article by Sue Blackwell in
al-Ahram castigating those who promote the
Protocols and deny the holocaust.
like most English people of my generation I have a father who fought against Nazi Germany and who brought me up to understand why. But increasingly these days I find myself having acrimonious exchanges, usually by email, with people whose messages start by expressing their support for my stand on Palestine and then continue with "I think you ought to read this."
"This" often consists of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which for a document over a hundred years old has weathered remarkably well. It crops up everywhere on the internet, including the weblogs of people who claim to be campaigners for Palestinian rights. I had a graduate student in my office not long ago, a highly intelligent young man who is a member of a socialist party in the UK. He told me in all seriousness that I really ought to read this incredible exposé of a world Jewish conspiracy, which was apparently new to him.
The Times of London discredited this document as a forgery as long ago as August 1921, yet it continues to enjoy a wide circulation. I'm told that its Arabic translation is particularly popular, and I recall that it featured prominently in "Horseman without a Horse" screened on Egyptian television in 2002.
She makes many points that I wholeheartedly agree with:
you do not have to deny the Holocaust in order to condemn Israel. First, there is the fact that Zionist emigration to Palestine began in the late 19th century, long before the Third Reich. Second, there is the simple moral argument that two wrongs do not make a right: whatever suffering the Jewish people have endured does not make it okay to take the land of another people who never did them any harm. And there is a third argument, which for me is the definitive one.
Some of the faces that stared down at me from the walls of the Auschwitz exhibitions were not Jewish. If Israel is the answer to anti-Semitism then what is the answer for the other five million victims of the Nazis? Where is the homeland for gay men? The very idea sounds ridiculous. Yet homophobia is very much alive all over the world today, and gay men and lesbians have every right to seek to escape the violence it often leads to.
Where is the homeland for people with physical and mental disabilities? For Catholic priests and Jehovah's Witnesses? What about the Romani and Sinti gypsies, some one million of whom perished at the hands of the Third Reich? We know that they came originally from north-west India some time in the 11th century, so surely the solution is obvious: they should go back there. There are 12-15 million Roma dispersed around the world today and they suffer horrendous racism and persecution in every part of it, particularly Europe. So, let them return to the Panjab, a land without a people for a people without a land; too bad for the Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Christians currently living there. Outrageous? Of course. And so is what Zionism has done to the Palestinians.
She also makes a point that I am not so comfortable with:
Last week many countries, including the UK, marked Holocaust Memorial Day. The Muslim Council of Britain boycotted this event, as they did last year. I do not agree with them, despite my enthusiasm for boycotts.
Of course I agree with her enthusiasm for boycotts.
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