Israel and the United States: A Case of Arab Holocaust Denial

author : Marco Rosaire Rossi topic : Arab holocaust | Israel

by Marco Rosaire Rossi

Within Israel the Jewish National Fund is seen as a respectable ecological agency. The purpose of the organization is to maintain Israeli national parks as places of ecological conservation and recreation. The JNF ensures the preservation and prosperity of pines, orchards, cactuses - even fig and almond trees. They have constructed picnics and playgrounds – all designed in an eco-friendly manner – and provide eco-tours that allow Israelis to enjoy the delicacy of mother earth while minimizing one’s ecological foot-print. The only problem with the areas under JNF control is what is underneath them. Buried in the ground are the remains of once thriving Palestinian villages – populated and rich in culture - that were there sixty years ago. Today, the history of those villages is trapped under meters of soil. Instead of being remembered for this, instead of the sites being places for reflection and mourning, the former Palestinian villages are covered up and used as recreational testaments to the “liberal nature” of the state of Israel.

The burying of Palestinian villages among the national parks of Israel is an appropriate metaphor for the burying of ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the mind of most Israelis. This past May many celebrated the creation of the Israeli state, but others took the time to recognized Al Nakba – “the catastrophe.” Immediately after the success of making the occupation of Palestine to costly for the British, the Jewish insurgency turned their “gun Zionism” on the indigenous Arab population. The goal was to banish as many Arabs from the land as possible to make way for the creation for Israel. Approximately 700,000 Palestinians left their home in a desperate attempt to escape Zionist violence. Reja-e Busailah, a survivor from town of Lydda described that during the Arab exodus she “passed dead babies and live babies, all the same, abandoned on the side or in ditches… Someone talked later having seen a baby alive on the bosom of a dead woman.” Even more startling was the massacre of Deir Yassin where the terrorist organization Irgun was responsible for “many sexual atrocities… Many girls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested. One story… a case in which a young girl was literally torn in two.”

Of course these accounts were immediately denied by Menachem Begin through the Haganah – the “legitimate” Zionist organization that provided moderate cover for the Irgun actions. For Begin the problem wasn’t a process of ethnic cleansing on the part of the Zionist by the fact that “Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of ‘Irgun butchery.’” Begin’s Arab holocaust denial has not only lived on in Israel, but has been institutionalized. In only a few days after the State of Israel celebrated its own creation, Israel’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Carmon, called on the UN to stop using the phrase Al Nakba - claiming that it was nothing more than a tool of propaganda from Arab nations. Not even a week later, Norman Finkelstein – a Jewish-American political scientist who has been critical of Israel – was detained upon entering the country. Later, claiming security reasons, he was banished from the state for the next 10 years.

This mechanism of psychological and political repression in-regards to Al Nakba have been described by Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. In it he explains, that “deeply rooted in people’s psyche, this mechanism exactly … (replaces) Palestinian sites of trauma and memory by spaces of leisure and entertainment for Israelis.” Psychologically, the point of Al Nakba denial is to turn suffering into pleasure, misery into joy, mourning into celebration; politically it turns repression into security, war into peace, apartheid into justice.

Expectedly, Israel’s staunchest ally – the United States – shares in its denial. On May 15, before the Knesset, President Bush recalled the mythology of Israel’s war for independence:

“The joy of independence was tempered by the outbreak of battle, a struggle that has continued for six decades. Yet in spite of the violence, in defiance of the threats, Israel has built a thriving democracy in the heart of the Holy Land. You have welcomed immigrants from the four corners of the Earth. You have forged a free and modern society based on the love of liberty, a passion for justice, and a respect for human dignity. You have worked tirelessly for peace. You have fought valiantly for freedom.”

A day before the speech it was reported by Fox News that Bush would briefly mention Al Nabka, but this turned out to be false. Absent from the rhetoric are any remarks on the ethnic cleansing of Arabs, the current state of the occupation, or the denial of the right of return. Instead there are only comments on Israel’s “love of liberty” and “passion for justice” and working “tirelessly for peace.” Rather than being condemned for shamelessly rewriting history, Bush’s remarks were met with exuberant praise. Again, the “Western world” has set a double-standard: while Jewish holocaust denial is condemned and even made illegal in some countries, Arab holocaust denial is practiced and endorsed by the powers that be.

For some people the denial of past crimes is of great importance; it helps explain the causes of current crimes, their possible solutions, and the repercussions for not pursuing those solutions. If Israel isn’t able to admit that its birth is the result of a process of ethnic cleansing, then it will never be able to humble itself before its neighbors for the sake of peace. By no accounts has Israel’s ongoing war with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors made its citizens safer. Similarly, the United States’ constant support for Israeli has become the main grievance against the US in the Arab world. Osama bin Laden declared that it was one of the principle reasons for targeting the US. The failure to acknowledge these facts – like the failure to acknowledge Al Nabka – is an ongoing pattern for both Israel and the United States.

Fortunately, some moderate voices have had a different perspective. Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said that Bush’s trip to Israel was a "bad omen," and, referring to democratic accountability, commented that "your people will punish you one day."