Zurich, 15 March: More than 200 people have demonstrated
against the escalating genocide committed by the Israeli armed
forces. On the main protest vehicle were 20 large yellow stars
of David carried by the demonstrators. On some of the placards
was written the slogan "Stop the bloodbath in the Middle
East!", while others carried the slogan "Never again
Shoa!". (The accompanying flyers explained that this is a
universal message and not just a judeocentric one. The actual
meaning is and would be rendered in the future as "Never
again genocide").
We, the organizers - Palestinians, Israelis and Swiss - hope to launch with this action an international campaign which will use this heavily loaded historical symbol in order to protest against the ongoing Israeli atrocities, to warn against further escalations and to plead for a non-violent and just way out of the present dangerous situation.
We feel that the dramatic present circumstances justify drawing the highly emotional and banned comparison between the Nazi oppression of the Jews with the present Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. The threat and danger of a further radicalization of the Israeli measures demands an adequate response.
We reject completely the racial and judeocentric taboo on comparing the Jewish tragedy during the Nazi era with any other crimes against humanity. A ban, which is an important political and cultural tool allowed only to be broken when it serves Israeli interests, e.g. by comparing Saddam Hussein with Adolf Hitler etc. [sic]
It is part of Jewish racism supported by judeophiles all over the world, which considers the Jewish suffering as more anguishing than the misery of the "gentiles" (non-Jews). It is the main constitutional part of an unhealthy secular Jewish "choseness", a posture which other groups of past and present victims should clearly avoid.
This attitude is demonstrated by Gideon Levy in the Ha'aretz issue of 15 March 2002:
The Israeli suffering was widely described in the media, as is proper, but the Palestinian suffering, which is far more severe, was barely mentioned in the media. This insensitivity and this exclusive focus on ourselves and our suffering is nothing new, though in the past few weeks it has deteriorated to new depths of uncaring. There was almost no mention in Israel of the large numbers of Palestinians who were killed, and the fact that just a few minutes from Jerusalem, tens of thousands of people were held captive, bombed from the air and went hungry, was not discussed in the country's lively public discourse.
The only relevant questions and criteria for comparing the Nazi atrocities against the Jews with any other genocides are:
1. Is there enough factual evidence supporting such an analogy?
2. What is the political sense of using this comparison?
First, there was worldwide shock after it was published that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) had marked the captive Palestinians by writing numbers on their arms. This practice shouldn't have surprised all those who had read the publication of Ha'aretz military expert Amir Oren on 25 January. He wrote:
In order to prepare properly for the next campaign, one of the Israeli officers in the territories said not long ago, it's justified and in fact essential to learn from every possible source. If the mission will be to seize a densely populated refugee camp, or take over the casbah in Nablus, and if the commander's obligation is to try to execute the mission without casualties on either side, then he must first analyse and internalize the lessons of earlier battles - even, however shocking it may sound, even how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto.
An Israeli intelligence officer, who had worked on "a plan to conquer and to partition the territories," said that this is a euphemism for "organizing ghettos for the Palestinian population". This officer could not avoid comparing his work with that of Adolf Eichmann and other Nazi technocrats preparing the crimes behind their desks.
It is no secret or a conspiracy theory that the IOF high command, under General Mofaz, sabotaged again and again all the efforts to achieve a cease-fire. The majority of the Israeli generals cannot always hide their desire for a further escalation, which will enable the IOF to expel the Palestinians, an act which means massacres and a regional war.
According to Ma'ariv, the Israeli army was disappointed by the relatively low Palestinian resistance to the occupation of the refugee camps and Ramallah. A fiercer Palestinian defence was supposed to deliver the IOF with a pretext for massacres and deportation.
Chief of Staff Mofaz expressed last night on the "Meet the press" television programme his disappointment that the government made him evacuate Ramallah. He said: "In Ramallah we should have made some further steps in order to complete the conquest of the city. These measures were not executed and I believe that, from a professional point of view, they should have been."
It is rather safe to argue that the IOF, like many other armies, internalized many attitudes, theories and way of conducts from the Nazi Wehrmacht. The Israeli soldiers and officers refusing to serve report about atrocities committed by the IOF and cannot always avoid making the forbidden analogy. It is almost a paradox that Israeli combat soldiers can identify more easily with experiences of the German soldiers who executed their Jewish ancestors in Eastern Europe than with their own relatives, the victims of these atrocities. The Israeli soldiers who read Christopher Browning's excellent book, Ordinary Men***, can identify similar problems and situations that confronted the normal German soldiers who were ordered to commit war crimes, an universal phenomenon which applies everywhere and demonstrates that certain mechanisms applied by the Nazis are not just unique German.
While comparing Nazi politic with that of Israel, it is very important to remember that, until 1942, the Nazi goal was "only" to expel the Jews out of Europe and not to exterminate them. The use of violence, such as at the state-organized pogrom of November 1938 (die Kristallnacht) was meant to make it clear to the reluctant Jews that they have to leave the Third Reich.
Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli education minister who is aware of the gradual radicalization of policy, said recently: "The Israeli government places the Palestinians in a concentration camp similar situation. Should we wait with our protests till they will be also gassed?"
This question doesn't seem out of proportion when one takes even only a very superficial look at statements made by many Israeli politicians, the content of numerous Israeli Internet chat forums, newsgroups etc. The majority of the Israelis desire much harsher measures to be implemented against the Palestinians.
The above presentation shows clearly that it is legitimate
to compare the present Israeli policy towards the Palestinians
with the Nazi line towards the Jews, at least that of the 1930s.
Even the famous historian, Professor Yehuda Bauer, who otherwise
opposes very strongly any such comparison, himself came very close
to doing it himself. He wrote in Ha'aretz (10 February
2002):
No doubt a growing number of Israeli-Jews think: "...We'll declare a terror and oppressive regime or expel (meaning killing) the Arabs. The Americans will support us at that"... It is incredible that such plans [ethnic cleansing accompanied necessarily by a genocide] come from Jews, whose ancestors were persecuted by and suffered over generations through identical ideologies.
"No allegation is meant here", Bauer had to add quickly, "to the Nazism and the Shoa."
Prof Bauer is very short of doing what for him is unbearable and instead compares this Israeli policy and ideology "only" to that of Milosevic. He is, of course, well aware of the fact that there were various stages of the Nazi crimes and that it is very legitimate to pursue the question of with which Nazi phase can we compare the present Israeli policy.
Second, it is again and again argued that an inflationary use of this comparison will reduce its effectiveness, will leave no place for describing the eventual further escalation and that, by drawing such controversial analogies, there is a danger that an unnecessary split would be caused inside the opposition to the Israeli atrocities. That an unnecessary discussion would be evolved and will drain the energies of the already very limited protest movements.
It is important again to stress the point that the situation now is very dramatic and requires drastic means. There can be hardly any serious controversy over that point.
With the yellow Star of David campaign, there is a chance to neutralize a very important Israeli propaganda weapon and turn it the other way around. By doing so, there is no misuse of the memory and experience of the Nazi victims, just the opposite. It is rather the main lesson out of this horrible past to try to do everything possible to prevent genocide anywhere in the world! The claimed danger of a split is basically an excuse for avoiding courageous steps in order to stop the ongoing bloodshed.
Shraga Elam, Why Palestinians and/orJews should protest wearing concentration camp clothes and/or bearing yellow stars of David
Shraga Elam, Holocaust religion and holocaust industry in the service of Israel
Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Kristallnacht in Palestine
** Shraga Elam is an Israeli investigative journalist based in Zurich and author of a highly-praised book in German on the collaboration of the Zionist leadership with the Nazis. The book, Hitlers Faelscher: wie juedische amerikanische und Schweizer Agenten der SS beim Falschgeldwaschen halfen [Hitler's Forgers: How Jewish, American and Swiss agents helped the SS with laundering faked money], is published by Uberreuter Verlag and can be purchased here.
*** Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Police Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992). The universal message of this book was conceived by Daniel J. Goldhagen as an attempt to play down the singularity of the role of Judeophobia for the ordinary German soldiers (Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).