Response to
Nigel Perry
By Israel Shamir
Mr Perry has worries. He is not worried about
Palestinian refugees or about dried up rivers of Palestine. He
is worried that a newspaper I quoted had a link with Holocaust
deniers. “We are only one click away from common or garden
variety Holocaust denial». Well, it is his worry. I am not
worried at all by the ‘deniers’ or ‘revisionists’. My opinion on
this subject was expressed in the Vampire Killers. But for
Perry, as for every employee of the Jewish lobby, holocaust cult
is the quintessence of holiness. You can deny Deir Yassin or
Immaculate Conception, they would not move a eyelid. Only
Holocaust is of interest for them.
Perry pushes it even further, ‘Shamir trying
to sell apparently stolen Nazi memorabilia to David Irving, who
is arguably the most famous Holocaust denier of our times’. In
this sentence only names are spelt correct, all the rest is a
lie, but let us, for the sake of argument, disregard it. After
all, a lie speaks more than truth about its inventor.
What is wrong, in Perry’s mind, with David
Irving? For me, a mass murder is a mass murder. Mass murder of
Auschwitz is not better neither worse than mass murder of
Dresden or Hiroshima. Both are irrelevant to the Palestinian
conflict. As for denial, Shimon Peres denied the mass murder of
Armenians, and somehow nobody is horrified.
On Wednesday, the 21st of June, a Paris court
condemned Bernard Lewis, professor of Middle Eastern History at
Princeton University for having denied the Armenian Genocide in
an interview with "Le Monde", one of France's most renowned
dailies. On Friday, 23 June, "Le Monde" reported about the
sentence, as it was ordered to do by the court, on page 11.
It made absolutely no harm to Bernard Lewis.
A leading figure of Not In My Name,
Jewish pro-Palestinian organization, did not deny but justified
the mass murder of Palestinian Christians in AD 614 (they were
bad to Jews and deserved their death, he wrote), and he remained
a best friend of Abu Nimah and Perry. Irving has his ideas on
the scope of the mass murder of Jews during WWII. These ideas
were recently voiced by the well known columnist of the
Nation, Christopher Hitchens, and the mass murderer of
Cambodians, Henry Kissinger, attacked him for ‘holocaust
denial’.
Norman Finkelstein criticized the idea of the
Jewish holocaust having no precedents, and mentioned that
proposed signs of the Jewish holocaust’s uniqueness are just
specific signs of this holocaust. All holocausts are dissimilar,
as unhappy families in the opening of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I
would add, the idea of the Jewish holocaust’s uniqueness is
based on a single premise: that of Jewish uniqueness. ‘Denial’
or ‘holocaust’ wasn’t ever a dispute about the events of the
WWII. It is about power, about present powerful position of the
American Jewish establishment and its Israeli offshoot. It is a
frightener: whatever you say, you are not allowed to discuss,
nay, mention the question of the Jewish power in the US.
Maxim Rodinson, a noted French Marxist and
biographer of the Prophet, defined Israel as ‘a settler state’,
a colony. But every settler state has its mother country, the
source of external power. French Algerie was manned and
supported by France. What is the external power supporting
Israel? What is its mother country? It is not the US, it is the
network of Jewish communities around the world led by the
American Jewish community, the World Jewry. The US was a settler
state, whose mother country was England. Later, the tables were
turned, and the US became more prominent. Similar development
took place in Brazil, that became more prominent than Portugal.
Maybe Israel will become more prominent than its ‘mother
country’, the overseas Jewish communities, but it did not happen
yet.
The Algerian comparison helps to understand
things. Imagine you are an Algerian visiting pre-Evian France.
In these days French army killed and tortured thousands of
Algerians. In France you would meet many French supporters of
Algerian Arab people, and probably you will come to a
conclusion: it is not France fights us, it is the French
settlers in Algerie. But it would be a wrong conclusion: the war
was carried out by the might of France. France – not the French
settlers in Algerie – was criticized in the UN and demanded to
put end to the war. French supporters of Algerian Arab cause
knew they fight against France. They thought that there are
things more important than consanguinity.
American Jews, supporters of the Palestinian
cause, will do well if they will consider it. The war in
Palestine is carried out by the offshoot of the American Jewry,
and it will be won or lost in the US. The real power of the Jews
is not just money, it is our strong influence over historical
narrative achieved by holding (and sometimes misusing) important
positions in the academy, media, study of arts. It is a delicate
subject, and an American Jewish thinker Isaac Asimov turned to
sci-fi in order to express his feelings. In his Foundation, he
speaks of ‘guardians of the historical narrative’. Still, this
subject has to be discussed, not necessarily on a Palestinian
mail list, but here too.
The permitted discourse on Palestine is a
mainstream Jewish discourse, between hard Jews of Kahane type
and the soft Peace Now. It always takes for granted necessity of
sustaining Jewishness of Israel. This precondition excludes real
solution of our problems.
Nigel Perry is an enforcer of PC, Political
Correctness. He proudly mentions many years of involvement with
Palestinian cause. Well, such guys are one of the reasons why
the Palestinian cause looks the way it does. He writes: ‘Shamir
suggested that the only thing that would assist the cause of
Palestinian liberation is the denigration and marginalization of
the American Jewish community. Needless to say, both this
analysis of the supposed problem and solution is intellectually
and morally bankrupt’.
Perry lies and misleads. To point out the
excessive influence of a group is not ‘to denigrate’. To pass
the power of discourse to people at large is not ‘to
marginalize’. Yes, the discourse should be changed and its base
democratized, in America, Europe and elsewhere. That was the
great idea of Edward Said, expressed in his Orientalism.
Present positions of the American Jewish
‘guardians of historical narrative’ are unsustainable, they are
also damaging. Democracy in Palestine, for me, was always a
symbol of democracy for all. Removal of Jewish extra rights in
Palestine is connected with removal of Jewish extra rights in
America. People should be equal and have equal access to
discourse, in my opinion.
Maybe I am mistaken. But Perry’s argument
shows the true interest of Perry. He takes care of his Jewish
American employers and enforces their line in the Palestinian
circles. I worry about you, the excluded ones, I write for you
to help you with the discourse.
Perry wrote: ‘It is worth noting that
Shamir's response to the Abunimah/Ibish
letter contains no actual denial of anti-Semitism. "Any
irrational aversion to Jews should be certainly eradicated and
condemned," is the closest he got. Not "I am not anti-Semitic"
or any formulation so simple’.
For me, the A-s word has no definite meaning.
If it means biological aversion to the descendents of Jews, I
think it is bad. If it means dissatisfaction with the important
positions held by the organized Jewry, it is reasonable. These
positions are not sustainable anyway. Ethnic and religious
minorities can dominate the Imperial discourse, as Greeks did in
the Ottoman Empire, but only as long as they identify themselves
with the true imperial interest. Otherwise, there will be a
painful divorce.
The holocaust discussion appears to me a
hidden crypto-religious discourse similar to the ‘filioque’
argument between the Orthodox and the Catholic churches, or a
dispute about Caliph succession between Sunni and Shiah Islam.
The sides say one thing, but mean something different. It is a
crypto-discussion about Jewish power, as the Islamic discussion
was an argument between power groups. I would say: drop this
oblique talk, let Auschwitz rest in peace, speak about the real
problem.
It has nothing to do with ‘guilt’, as French
feel no guilt for a million of killed Algerians, nor Americans
care about the murdered Vietnamese. ‘The guilt feeling for the
Jewish holocaust’ is just a form of submission to the Jewish
power. In the same way, confession of sins in the Catholic
Church was a form of submission to the Church power.
As long as the participants of the discussion
accept guidance of Nigel Perry and other crypto-supporters of
Jewish exclusivity, they are bound to lose. The Western world is
ripe for the real discussion of the real Jewish power, without
fear of anti-Semitic labeling. After all, we are able to discuss
the power of aristocracy, despite the aristocrats’ enormous
suffering in the terror of 1793. Would ‘the hate laws’ apply to
a discourse on the vestiges of the aristocracy influence?
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