Islam's Holocaust denial trap

[barb162]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/681383.html
Last update - 09:41 10/02/2006


Islam's Holocaust denial trap

By John Bunzl

VIENNA - When reading the infamous statements by Iranian President Ahmadinejad and similar utterances by other Arab or Muslim spokespeople an obvious contradiction becomes apparent: They oscillate between denying the Holocaust ?(e.g., calling it a myth?) and demanding that the price for the Holocaust ?(meaning contrary to the denial, it is something that must have happened?) should be paid by those who committed it ?(Germany, Austria, Europe, Christianity, the West?) and not by the Palestinians.

This contradiction can be explained by forms of Holocaust instrumentalization specific to a Middle Eastern context. Although it is not always easy to distinguish between these and other European/Christian forms, it could be stated in a general way that the latter try to rehabilitate anti-Semitic atrocities and their perpetrators, while the former try to delegitimize the State of Israel. It is this attempt and the ?(partly true?) assumption that the Holocaust is used to justify Israeli policies that obstructs the perception of the Holocaust as a tragedy in its own right.

A simple experiment might illustrate this observation: Let?s assume for a moment that the Zionists had chosen to colonize, say, Argentina. This would probably have eliminated any attempts by Arab intellectuals to trivialize the Holocaust. Since pro-Zionist forces in the United States would have occupied themselves with developments in Latin America, theories of an imperialist-Zionist plot to dominate the Middle East and confront Islam would hardly have come up.


But the struggle over Palestine created a mental and conceptual trap. Zionist colonization and native resistance constitute the core of the conflict. But due to its long duration, a legitimizing superstructure developed. The notion that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," combined with conspiracy theories − both phenomena being traditionally widespread in Oriental political culture − opened the door to a selective adoption of anti-Semitic "ideas" deriving from a European/Christian context. To this must be added rudimentary anti-Jewish elements in the Koran that could be exploited and blown out of proportion. Perceptions of the Holocaust have to be "understood" in this context.
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[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I know a Muslim who died in the Holocost

Noorunisa Khan.