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Revisionist Historians for Arabs |
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Written by Ibrahim Alloush
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A Previewa) Who are the revisionist historians?You probably heard through the Zionist-controlled media machine that revisionist historians are a bunch of anti-semitic Christian fundamentalists. The truth, however, is that historical revisionism is NOT an ideology or an ideological current. Among revisionist historians there are Muslims like Roger Garaudy. There are leftists like Pierre Guillaume, Garaudy’s publisher who used to issue a publication called ‘Socialism or Barbarism’, and whose bookstore was attacked and destroyed by the Zionists repeatedly. There are Jews among revisionist historians like Henry Lewkowicz, and there are as well Christians and Christian fundamentalists.
Historical revisionism then is not an ideology, but a position, supported with facts and meticulous analyses, on a specific historical event: the ‘Holocaust’. And for taking such a position, many revisionist historians have been fined, fired from their jobs, socially ostracized, and even assassinated. In many countries in Western Europe
now, which claim to defend free speech otherwise, expressing views sympathetic to historical revisionism is punishable by law.
b) Do revisionist historians deny that Jews died in WWII?
Revisionist historians do NOT deny that Jews died in the Second World War. They say, however, that hundreds of thousands of Jews died along with the forty five million who perished in that war. The revisionist historians used hard sciences like physics and chemistry in proving that the so-called gas chambers were not used to exterminate Jews systematically. Crematoria, on the other hand, were used to dispose of the corpses of people from different nationalities (after their deaths) to circumvent plagues. Of course, a crematorium is something
completely different from a gas chamber. Scientific evidence indicates that the latter never existed. They proved, for example, that Anne Frank died of Typhus, like many others who supposedly died in a systematic campaign by the Nazis. The revisionist historians then dispute: a) the number of Jews who died in WWII, b) how they died, and
c) the alleged uniqueness of the death of the Jews in human history.
The revisionist historians dispute scientifically the received version of the ‘Holocaust’, not that Jews died in WWII.
c) Why is this important to Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims?
Many Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, frequently voice frustration at the indifference with which Western public opinion treats Palestinian and Arab suffering at the hands of the Zionists. In fact, the Zionists have succeeded in presenting themselves to Western public opinion as a people who were so victimized in the ‘Holocaust’, they practically acquired a free license from the West to do anything to anybody at anytime with impunity. Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims frequently say when the ‘Holocaust’ is cited in defense of the Zionist movement that if there had been a ‘Holocaust’, why should they be the ones to pay for it? After all, nobody, even the Jews, accuses the Arabs of perpetrating the ‘Holocaust’!
But things are not so simple. The myths of the ‘Holocaust’ are extremely important for the Zionist movement. For example:
i) the claim that the Jews were systematically exterminated in WWII, provides the argument for the need for a safe haven for the Jews, i.e., the need for “Israel”. This myth basically provides a justification for the rape of Palestine. As Uri Avenary put it in a recent article, the Jews are like a man who jumped from a burning building only to land on somebody’s head, and the Jews landed on the heads of the Palestinians. He says blithely that the [real] dislocation of a few hundred thousand Palestinians cannot be compared of course to the [alleged] extermination of a several million Jews, but the Palestinians have been the victims of the ‘victims’, and this is why the world won’t support them as it supported the blacks of South Africa.
ii) the claim that the Jews were exterminated in a way unparalleled in human history, i.e., the argument of the uniqueness of Jewish deaths, provides a justification for “Israel” and the Zionist movement to violate every ethical and legal code in the book, and to persecute opponents, like the revisionist historians and the Arabs, without any reprimand, even with sympathy, from the West.
iii) the claim that the countries and the peoples of the West bear a collective guilt for the alleged ‘Holocaust’ lies at the heart of the support that Western public opinion furnishes “Israel” and the Zionist movement. This collective guilt has been a very lucrative source of financial compensation and moral support, without which “Israel” could not have been established or sustained.
It is because revisionist historians of different ideological backgrounds quarrel with all of the claims above that they represent such a serious threat to the Zionist movement. They basically threaten the lifeline of Zionism in the West. Thus, their importance as a crucial ally to the Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, should not be missed by any of us, and by the defenders of truth and justice anywhere in the world.
On the other hand, there are Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims who were duped by the supporters of Zionism into thinking that to get the Palestinian cause accepted in the West, they have to pay homage to the Zionist version of the ‘Holocaust’, and to participate in the persecution of revisionist historians. In fact, this is extremely self-destructive behavior. By accepting the claims of the Zionists about the ‘Holocaust’, we would be effectively setting the stage for:
i) accepting the rape of Palestine and the legitimacy of the Jewish invasion of Palestine, by accepting the Zionist narrative on how the Jews ‘had to’ come to Palestine.
ii) accepting implicitly the motives for Western political, financial, and moral support for “Israel”, and thus obstructing sincere efforts by many Arab activists to garner support for the Palestinian cause in the West.
iii) accepting implicitly part of the motives for the siege on Iraq, since Iraq is viewed first and foremost as a threat to “Israel”. The memory of how the ancient Iraqis obliterated the ancient kingdom of Israel several thousand years ago intertwine with the Hollowcause here to provide a background of a people under a continuous threat to maintain support for the siege, more than ten years after the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. When claims are spread that Iraq represents a threat to the neighboring countries, who do you think is meant here?
Thus, it is counter-productive for an Arab to gain individual acceptance in the West by conceding to the Zionist narrative on the ‘Holocaust’. The price of that individual acceptance is the national rights of the Palestinian Arab people. It’s not worth it!
d) Should we accept everything about revisionist historians?
Of course not! Historical revisionism is a research project underway. As said earlier, revisionist historians are not one monolithic prototype. Historical revisionism has obtained some useful results, but it remains lacking in many points.
For example, upon reading the literature of many revisionist historians, I noticed that they do not give enough attention to the role and interest of Western governments in forcibly maintaining the myths of the ‘Holocaust’. The dilemma can be paraphrased like this: if we agree that the death of the Jews in WWII is neither unique nor
unparalleled, and if we agree the numbers were highly over exaggerated and that gas chambers were not used to exterminate Jews, but that crematoria were used to fight diseases emanating from corpses, we are left with a big question which is WHY DID THE JEWS COME TO PALESTINE THEN?
In fact, it is historically proven that European colonial powers blocked the immigration of Jews on and off in an attempt to force them to go to Palestine. Why did they do that?
European colonial powers had an interest in creating an alien demographic barrier in the midst of the Arab World, in Palestine, as is evident from the correspondences of Viscount Palmerston, the British Ambassador in Istanbul, and Lord Rotschield in the first half of the nineteenth century. That’s when the idea of creating a colonial base
in Palestine first came into being, after Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt succeeded in uniting the Arab east with Egypt and the Sudan.
The need for that colonial base, i.e., the colonial need for “Israel”, remains as indispensable today as it was in the first half of the nineteenth century. Hence, mobilizing public support for “Israel” in Western democratic societies, and justifying all the financial, political, and moral support rendered to it, necessitate that Western
public opinion embrace the myths of the ‘Holocaust’ wholeheartedly.
Mind you, this happens NOT because poor Western governments are manipulated by some Zionist conspiracy, but because Western governments derive strategic benefits from creating and maintaining a colonial base that would split the eastern and Western parts of the Arab World and weaken it.
To attribute all support for “Israel” by Western governments to Zionist influence is to miss the point behind the dynamics of imperialism, divide and conquer strategies, and economic exploitation. In fact, attributing all Western support to “Israel” to Zionist influence there would set the stage for a nother political mishap that many Arabs make: deluding oneself into pandering to neo-colonial policies of Western governments in the illusion of winning them over against Zionism. The first political mishap, of course, is that of pandering to Zionists in the illusion of winning over the West! These are in fact two sides of the same coin. We cannot afford to miss the symbiotic relationship between Zionism and imperialism. By getting the Jews to play their reactionary geopolitical role in Palestine, through “Israel”, imperialism and Zionist movement have exposed them to serious danger.
That is the real threat the Jews should be aware of. We are not the threat. We are only a people who will not stop at anything to get their LAND back. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 30 April 2009 )
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