- Back in 2007 the notorious American Jewish right-wing
organization, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) announced that it recognised
the events in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred as
"genocide." The ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, insisted
that he made the decision after discussing the matter with 'historians'.
For some reason he failed to mention who the historians were, nor did he
refer to their credibility or field of scholarship. However, Foxman also
consulted with one holocaust survivor who supported the decision. It was
Elie Wiesel, not known for being a leading world expert on the Armenian
ordeal.
-
- The idea of a Zionist organization being genuinely concerned,
or even slightly moved, by other people's suffering could truly be a monumental
transforming moment in Jewish history. However, this week we learned that
the ADL is once again engaged in the dilemma of Armenian suffering. It
is not convinced anymore that the Armenians suffered that much. It is now
lobbying the American congress not to recognize the killings of Armenians
as 'genocide. This week saw the ADL "speaking out againstCongressional
acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide, and is, instead, advocating Turkey's
call for a historical commission to study the events."
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- How is it that an event that took place a century ago
is causing such a furor? One day it is generally classified as 'genocide',
the next, it is demoted to an ordinary instance of one man killing another.
Was it an 'historical document' that, out of nowhere, popped out on Abe
Foxman's desk? Are there some new factual revelations that led to such
a dramatic historical shift? l don't think so.
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- The ADL's behaviour is a glimpse into the notion of Jewish
history and the Jewish understanding of the past. For the nationalist
and political Jew, history is a pragmatic tale, it is an elastic account.
It is foreign to any scientific or academic method. Jewish history transcends
itself beyond factuality, truthfulness or
- correspondence rules with any given vision of reality.
It also repels integrity or ethics. It by far prefers total submission,
instead of creative and critical thinking. Jewish history is a phantasmic
tale that is there to make the Jews happy and the Goyim behave themselves.
It is there to serve the interests of one tribe and that tribe only. In
practice, from a Jewish perspective, the decision whether there was an
Armenian genocide or not is subject to Jewish interests: is it good for
the Jews or is it good for Israel.
-
- Interestingly enough, history is not a particularly 'Jewish
thing'. It is an established fact that not a single Jewish historical text
has been written between the 1st century (Josephus Flavius) and early 19th
century (Isaak Markus Jost). For almost 2 thousand years Jews were not
interested in their own or anyone else's past, at least not enough to chronicle
it. As a matter of convenience, an adequate scrutiny of the past was never
a primary concern within the Rabbinical tradition. One of the reasons is
probably that there was no need for such a methodical effort. For the Jew
who lived during ancient times and the Middle Ages, there was enough in
the Bible to answer the most relevant questions to do with day-to-day life,
Jewish meaning and fate. As Israeli historian Shlomo Sand puts it, "a
secular chronological time was foreign to the 'Diaspora time' that was
shaped by the anticipation for the coming of the Messiah."
-
- However, in the mid 19th century, in the light of secularisation,
urbanisation, emancipation and due to the decreasing authority of the Rabbinical
leaders, an emerging need of an alternative cause rose amongst the awakening
European Jews. All of a sudden, the emancipated Jew had to decide who he
was and where he came from. He also started to speculate what his role
might be within the rapidly opening Western society.
-
- This is where Jewish history in its modern form was invented.
This is also where Judaism was transformed from a world religion into a
'land registry' with some clearly devastating racially orientated and expansionist
implications. As we know, Shlomo Sand's account of the 'Jewish Nation'
as a fictional invention is yet to be challenged academically. However,
the dismissal of factuality or commitment to truthfulness is actually symptomatic
of any form of contemporary Jewish collective ideology and identity politics.
The ADL's treatment of the Armenian topic is just one example. The Zionist's
dismissal of a Palestinian past and heritage is just another example. But
in fact any Jewish collective vision of the past is inherently Judeo-centric
and oblivious to any academic or scientific procedure.
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- When I was Young
-
- When I was young and naïve I regarded history as
a serious academic matter. As I understood it, history had something to
do with truth seeking, documents, chronology and facts. I was convinced
that history aimed to convey a sensible account of the past based on methodical
research. I also believed that it was premised on the assumption that understanding
the past may throw some light over our present and even help us to shape
a prospect of a better future. I grew up in the Jewish state and it took
me quite a while to understand that the Jewish historical narrative is
very different. In the Jewish intellectual ghetto, one decides what the
future ought to be, then one constructs 'a past' accordingly. Interestingly
enough, this exact method is also prevalent amongst Marxists. They shape
the past so it fits nicely into their vision of the future. As the old
Russian joke says, "when the facts do not conform with the Marxist
ideology, the Communist social scientists amend the facts (rather than
revise the theory)".
-
- When I was young, I didn't think that history was a matter
of political decisions or agreements between a rabid Zionist lobby and
its favorite holocaust survivor. I regarded historians as scholars who
engaged in adequate research following some strict procedures. When I was
young I even considered becoming an historian.
-
- When I was young and naive I was also somehow convinced
that what they told us about our 'collective' Jewish past really happened.
I believed it all, the Kingdom of David, Massada, and then the Holocaust:
the soap, the lampshade*, the death march, the six million.
-
- As it happened, it took me many years to understand that
the Holocaust, the core belief of the contemporary Jewish faith, was not
at all an historical narrative for historical narratives do not need the
protection of the law and politicians. It took me years to grasp that my
great-grandmother wasn't made into a 'soap' or a 'lampshade'*. She probably
perished out of exhaustion, typhus or maybe even by mass shooting. This
was indeed bad and tragic enough, however not that different from the fate
of many millions of Ukrainians who learned what communism meant for real.
"Some of the worst mass murderers in history were Jews" writes
ZionistSever Plocker on the Israeli Ynet disclosing the Holodomor and Jewish
involvement in this colossal crime, probably the greatest crime of the
20th century. The fate of my great-grandmother was not any different from
hundreds of thousands of German civilians who died in an orchestrated indiscriminate
bombing, because they were Germans. Similarly, people in Hiroshima died
just because they were Japanese. 1 million Vietnamese died just because
they were Vietnamese and 1.3 million Iraqis died because they were Iraqis.
In short the tragic circumstances of my great grandmother wasn't that special
after all.
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- It Doesn't make sense
-
- It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative,
in its current form, doesn't make any historical sense. Here is just one
little anecdote to elaborate on:
-
- If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their
Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative
insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into
the Reich at the end of the war? I have been concerned with this simple
question for more than a while. I eventually launched into an historical
research of the topic and happened to learn from Israeli holocaust historian
professor Israel Gutman that Jewish prisoners actually joined the march
voluntarily. Here is a testimony taken from Gutman's book
-
- "One of my friends and relatives in the camp came
to me on the night of the evacuation and offered a common hiding place
somewhere on the way from the camp to the factory. The intention was to
leave the camp with one of the convoys and to escape near the gate, using
the darkness we thought to go a little far from the camp. The temptation
was very strong. And yet, after I considered it all I then decided to
join (the march) with all the other inmates and to share their fate "
(Israel Gutman [editor], People and Ashes: Book Auschwitz - Birkenau, Merhavia
1957).
-
- I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory
in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the
end of the war? Why didn't the Jews wait for their Red liberators?
-
- I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz,
we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should
ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow
a religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws.
We should strip the holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status and
treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time and place
-
- 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should
reclaim our history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European
people stand up against their next door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated
in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their
troubled history? If they genuinely planned to do so, as the early Zionists
claimed, why did they fail? Why did America tighten its immigration laws
amid the growing danger to European Jews? We should also ask for what purpose
do the holocaust denial laws serve? What is the holocaust religion there
to conceal? As long as we fail to ask questions, we will be subjected to
Zionists and their Neocons agents' plots. We will continue killing in the
name of Jewish suffering. We will maintain our complicity in Western imperialist
crimes against humanity.
-
- As devastating as it may be, at a certain moment in time,
a horrible chapter was given an exceptionally meta-historical status. Its
'factuality' was sealed by draconian laws and its reasoning was secured
by social and political settings. The Holocaust became the new Western
religion. Unfortunately, it is the most sinister religion known to man.
It is a license to kill, to flatten, no nuke, to wipe, to rape, to loot
and to ethnically cleanse. It made vengeance and revenge into a Western
value. However, far more concerning is the fact that it robs humanity of
its heritage, it is there to stop us from looking into our past with dignity.
Holocaust religion robs humanity of its humanism. For the sake of peace
and future generations, the holocaust must be stripped of its exceptional
status immediately. It must be subjected to thorough historical scrutiny.
Truth and truth seeking is an elementary human experience. It must prevail.
-
-
- *During WWII and after it was widely believed that soaps
and lampshades were being mass produced from the bodies of Jewish victims.
In recent years the Israeli Holocaust museum admitted that there was no
truth in any of those accusations.
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- http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/truth-history-and-integrity-by-gilad-atzmon.html
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