disturbing

[winterbadger]

Iranian leader denies Holocaust

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has courted further controversy by explicitly calling the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry a "myth".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4527142.stm

This would be laughable if Ahmadinejad were some loony crackpot, or third-world dictator whose power rested on his control of his armies. But he's not; he's the elected leader of a significant nation.

He even makes at least one valid point.

He returned to his earlier theme that Europe should shoulder the responsibility for a Jewish state.

"If you [Europeans] committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian nation pay the price?

European guilt at the end of WWII *did* somehow get paid off with someone else's land. Of course, the point was to get Jews *out* of Europe, where they had been being slaughtered, back to what was claimed to be their ancestral homeland (never mind that there were now other people living there...) But still, a neat solution for everyone but the Palestinians. Other, earlier European proposals, like creating a Jewish state in Kenya, had a similar flavour of "why don't we give you some of someone else's land..." to them, too.

But back to Ahmadinejad... presumably this is not an indication of practical policy as quote fodder to boost his popularity at home. But the fact that that *will* boost his popularity, instead of causing the Iranian people tremendous embarrassment, is pretty disturbing. It shows just how much of a hill ther still is to climb in finding a solution to the problems of the region that will enable, if not amity between nations, at least toleration.

Comments

[pusscat.livejournal.com]

I was listening to the news this morning and heard this mentioned, too, and it really frightens and saddens me that someone with so much authority can deny the Holocaust. I have been to Dachau, I have seen the sites of mass graves and bloodstains still visible on the walls of the "laboratory", I have sat in the woods and cried at the site of grave after grave after grave marked only with a wooden post, and while I have great sympathy for people living in the Middle East, I can't help but flinch from this quote.

[winterbadger]

I'd be concerned if anyone could see that quote and not flinch. In fact, it's that which disturbs me most about this--that someone fairly well educated, intelligent, the leader of a great nation can actually bring himself to say that is deply, deeply worrying. Some of it's racism, but some of it is profound, practically willing ignorance.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

That's been the whole point of the Zionist movement -- the Jews needed a land of their own, because they hadn't had one since back when the Romans kicked their asses, and they were tired of getting blamed for all the things going wrong wherever they went. There is some fascinating historical documentation about where they looked at going, at a lot of it boiled down to "where can we afford to move to?" They considered Uganda, Argentina, and Alaska, among other places. Still, they mostly wanted to settle in the Holy Land, and started immigrating as best they could. I've seen numbers that estimate the population of Palestine vary widely, but it does appear to have started growing around the turn of the century, with a definite Jewish presence.

Then, WWI came along, and the Ottomans sided with the Central Powers, which led to more ass-kicking and loss of territory. (Side note: if Ahmadinejad was *really* interested in revanchism, he'd be arguing for the return of the entire Middle East to Turkish rule. Bet we'll see *that* happening soon, mm-hmmm.) The British and the French split the region up, with the French claiming the Syria/Lebanon area, and the British getting the rest. The Balfour Declaration had already been issued, and the British had been advocating a "national home" for the Jews for quite a while, although never really specifying what that meant.

This is when Jewish immigration spiked, and there was even more tension. Finally, when the British tried to choke off Jewish immigration, lots of illegal immigration took place. By 1947, estimates generally put around 1.2 million Arabs in Palestine, along with about 650,000 Jews. The UN suggested partition, the plan failed, and there was a war, which the Arabs lost. Israel came into being, which has galled a great many folks ever since, including Mr. Ahmadinejad.

What's the "fair" solution for the Palestinian refugees? I don't know, but I think they're going to have to take what they can get, which is not a stand that many of them have ever felt a lot of enthusiasm for, apparently. If they're going to be as militantly anti-Jewish as they've been in years past, and continue to act in ways that make it seem doubtful that a Palestinian state can be counted on to meet its responsibilities to its citizens and to the rest of the world... well, "what they can get" may be getting smaller every day.

[winterbadger]

That's a good thumbnail sketch of the history.

What's the "fair" solution for the Palestinian refugees? I don't know, but I think they're going to have to take what they can get, which is not a stand that many of them have ever felt a lot of enthusiasm for, apparently.

Can one blame them? It's not a solution that most of us would find satisfying if we were in their position. Certainly it wasn't a solution that Zionist Jews were happy about. Problem is that the Palestinains, like the Zionists, have very little power themselves, and their "allies" tend to be powers who are using the Palsetinian struggle for their own ends, as the Allies did with both the Jewish homeland concept and the Arab Revolt during WWI.

(Side note: if Ahmadinejad was *really* interested in revanchism, he'd be arguing for the return of the entire Middle East to Turkish rule.

I'm not sure I follow the logic there. He's not arguing for simply turning back the clock; the Iranians would have no particular interest in Turkish domination of the Middle East, and conservatives like Mr A even less so, since Turkey today is a much more secular state than Iran is. He's suggesting that if Europeans felt so guilty about the Holocaust, why didn't they create a Jewish state out of their own lands, instead of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine? His denial of the Holocaust is despicable, but then so is what's happened in Palestine since WWI.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

Mostly, my comment about returning it to the Turks was a joke -- arguing about who has more right to the area based on historical presence is a course that gets you into deep water very quickly, and becomes moot in the face of all the competing historical arguments.

His suggestion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the history, though -- the partition plan of 1947 gave Palestinians a state of their own (sort of), just like it gave Jews a quasi-independent state. That plan went out the window really quickly when the Arabs lost the resulting war, and the whole thing has been a mess ever since. The Jews got a state where it is because there were already a lot of them there, and they asked for it from the UN, not because the Europeans said, "Let's move you all to Tel Aviv". Mr. A is setting up a false dichotomy, a sort of "when did you stop beating your wife?" situation by implying that the Palestinians got aced out of their land by the Europeans, when actually, they just lost a war.

It sucks that the Palestinians have been screwed over, and I wish there was more to be done to help them. There are not so many alternatives left, though, especially given the choices that they (and their allies) have made in the years since 1947. Maybe now that Arafat is roasting in Hell, things can get better.

[winterbadger]

The Jews got a state where it is because there were already a lot of them there, and they asked for it from the UN, not because the Europeans said, "Let's move you all to Tel Aviv".

I don't think I really agree with that. There were "already a lot of them there" because the European powers had been encouraging them to move there for decades (in the case of Britain, as early as 1840 and certainly since the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the League of Nations Palestine Mandate of 1922). Yes, the British notionally closed Palestine during WWII--because they rather coldly calculated that it was more important to appease Arabs than Jews during the war--a decision that resulted in a Zionist campaign of terroism and the assassination of at least one British minister of state. However, the Jewish population of Palestine went from 175,000 in 1931 (17% of the population) to 553,000 in 1945 (31% of the population), so the closure was obviously not even vaguely effective.

I agree, it's a little misleading to connect the creation of a Jewish state with the end of WWII, since it had clearly been going on for some time. But the US and Europe have certainly accepted and supported the premise that the Holocaust demonstrated that it is essential for Jews to have a homeland of their own. But it's not entirely unreasonable, I think, to point out that it's easy enough for the western powers to decide to plant a new state in lands that aren't really theirs to give away, and to ask, even rhetorically, why they didn't propose to settle the Jews on lands that were theirs to give away.

Of course, when Balfour posed the question, even hypothetically, of settling the Jews somewhere other than Palestine to Chaim Weizmann, the leading British Zionist, Weizmann rejected it out of hand, just as Theodor Herzl and the 6th World Zionist Conference rejected the idea of settling in Kenya instead of Palestine. Zionism was not seriously prepared to accept anything but Palestine.

[peaceful-fox.livejournal.com]

I just don't understand *how* anyone could deny the Holocaust. The next time I go to Germany I plan to visit a concentration camp. I want to see this so I won't forget what happened. It will be painful, but I think it's necessary.