Peace At What Price?

Dr. Alex Grobman

For years, Israelis were reluctant to acknowledge the potent and inexhaustible stream of antisemitism in Arab media and in pronouncements by Arab religious and political leaders.

According to Menahem Milson, professor of Arab literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Israelis repress the virulent plague of hatred that surrounds them because of the Zionist ideal. Zionism, the dream, was supposed to be the end of European antisemitism. Jews came to the Promised Land to escape Jew-hatred, and when they got there, they discovered it to be ubiquitous. And then, after the Holocaust, by psychological necessity, they slipped into denial.

Milson says if the Jewish intellectuals and politicians in Israel concede that the strength of Arab antisemitism has poisoned the psyches of their Palestinian partners in peace, it justifies those who question Arab sincerity in peace talks and support those who refuse to surrender land.

Itamar Marcus, who monitors Arabic sermons, speeches and media via the Palestinian Media Watch, reports on the constant barrage of hatred and lies broadcast by the Palestinian Authority, much of it imported from other Arab lands. Arie Stav, director of the Ariel Center for Policy Research, reports that, in general, Israeli academic institutions were minimally interested in analyzing this phenomenon and its effects.

Shimon Peres as Foreign Minister in 1993, Stav notes, ordered the Palestinian Covenant removed from all Israeli government offices. The Covenant is anti-Israel and contains the PLO’s ideology, its objectives and calls for the “elimination of Zionism in Palestine (article 15). It also proclaims the “entire illegality of the establishment of Israel” (Article 19) and the need “to destroy the Zionist presence.”

After a number of wars, two intifadahs and the failure of the Oslo Accords to bring peace, some Israelis are now convinced that the Arabs will never accept the existence of the Jewish State and will use every subterfuge to destroy it. Not all Israelis share this view. There are those who believe that there are Arabs who want peace. That is understandable, at least from a psychological perspective.

Sixty years after the Holocaust, the Jewish State is negotiating with an Arab leader who denies that it ever happened. He used his “knowledge” to spread lies and hatred for Jews among Arabs in many lands, lies and hatred found in his 1982 doctoral dissertation for Moscow’s Oriental College. The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen), claimed that the Nazis and the leadership of the Zionist movement conspired together to create the Holocaust.

In 1984 he published a book based on his dissertation, questioning if gas chambers were used to exterminate Jews, and claiming that “even less than a million” might have been murdered. The Zionists used a higher number of victims, he said, to extract “greater gains” when they would “distribute the spoils.” He asserted, “Raising a discussion regarding the number of Jews [murdered] does not in any way diminish the severity of the crime committed against them, as murder – even of one man – is a crime that the civilized world cannot accept and humanity cannot accept.”

Abu Mazen’s Holocaust denial challenges the legitimacy of the Jewish State. Scholars at MEMRI say that he does that by showing how the Zionists worked with the Nazis to destroy the Jewish people—because only “Palestine” was the right place for Jews. He claims “The Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule in order to arouse the government’s hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination.”

Denying the Holocaust is part of a strategy to deny the Jews any connection to the Land of Israel, including the strategy of denying the Bible. Itamar Marcus illustrates the problem:

*“Biblical Judaism is really Islam. Biblical Jews are really Arab, and the Land of Israel is really the Arabian Peninsula [Judaism is not a religion on the full sense of the word…] The religion of Moses is a religion, apparently it is the Islamic religion, and some research that was published find[s] that, when translated correctly, the Torah texts show that it is a continuation of Islam.”
*“It is known scientifically as well, that a homeland of all the [Israeli] tribes exists today in Asir [in the Arabian Peninsula]. Their history is there.”

*“Modern Judaism, the Torah and Bible are forgeries. Jews are falsifiers and the enemies of Allah and Islam. The Torah was brought down while it contained guidance…. They [the Jews] faked the words of Allah and changed their religion and laws are wicked…

Professor Arthur Hertzberg, a Jewish leader and major historian, says, “The attack by Holocaust deniers is… the most hurtful that has ever been leveled against Jews. We have long been prepared to defend our religion and our corporate character …but the immediate reaction to the Holocaust deniers is outrage….”

In our book Denying History, Michael Shermer and I note that Holocaust denial is a form of pseudohistory. It is an affront against history and how the science of history is practiced. To deny the Holocaust is shocking because it attempts to deny our search to understand extreme acts of humanity. Holocaust denial is so dangerous and despicable—it is an attempt not just to deny a true past, but to deny a meaningful one.

By denying the Holocaust and vilifying Zionist leaders, Abu Mazen declares Jews have no legitimate right to any part of Israel.

Before anyone signs an agreement involving the security of the Jews in the State of Israel and perhaps its viability, is it unreasonable for someone to go up to Abu Mazen and just ask him if he really believes what he wrote? Don’t we need to know if there is a reason to believe he is different from his predecessor? So far, the only difference is better personal grooming. Since his election, things do not bode well. For years the Jews in America and many of its leading academics argued against meeting with deniers lest they be given legitimacy. Are we legitimizing Holocaust denial and Jew-hatred while we delegitimize Israel?

We yearn for peace, but at what price?

An historian, Dr. Grobman most recent book is Battling for Souls: The Vaad Hatzala Rescue Committee in Post War Europe [KTAV]. He is also co-author of Denying History: Who Says The Holocaust Never Happened And Why Do They Say It? (University of California Press, 2000). His next book Zionism Equals Racism: The New War Against The Jews will be published in 2005.