Holocaust Hoax

Auschwitz was liberated 61 years ago, but anyone passing through Teheran this week could well have been benign to the fact. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president is doing his level best to erase the memory of that small Polish town.

101 offensive remarks and a seminar for Holocaust denial later, and don’t be too surprised to learn that the word on the Arab street is that the Shoah, as Elie Wiesel coined it, never happened at all.

To learn more about the Holocaust hoax and the myth of the six million, Infolive.tv took to the streets of Ramallah where we asked for the Palestinian response to Yom HaShoah. The responses ranged from indifference to disbelief.

Over half of those asked were categorical in their denial; the diatribe of radical Islamic education having done the job well. One middle-aged spectacle wearing gent, told our Arab affairs reporter, "there were only 500,000 Jews in Europe at the time," and so he reasoned, quite understandably, "how could six million have been killed?"


After some careful research, you may be surprised to learn, that I for one agree with Mahmoud: the Holocaust is an episode full of lies and deceit; here are just a few choice examples.
To this day, Warsaw cemetery remains a remarkable cradle of life; the only place in the city with even a semblance of Jewish life - untouched by Nazi hands.

During the round up and deportation of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, a myth was spread among the Nazi soldiers who patrolled the city, that the Jewish cemetery of Warsaw was haunted.

A small number of children were discreetly hidden among piles of dead bodies stacked ready to be thrown over the ghetto walls into the cemetery. The plan paid proved a success; not one German soldier dared step foot inside the cemetery. A tiny number of Warsaw's 400.000 Jews survived living in and among the gravestones, creeping out of their hiding places at night to reclaim the food parcels hidden each day among the day's new corpses.


The myth of Warsaw cemetery is joined by others like it - each with one or two survivors able to tell the tale. To hear more of these myths, I refer you back to some choice Islamic propaganda - however a close reading tells not only of myths, but of forthright lies as well:

In the first of a sea of wild lies, writer, educator Dr. Janus Korczak bravely shielded the Jewish children in his Polish orphanage from the reality of Nazi oppression.

On August 6, 1942, the date given for the children's deportation to Treblinka, Korczak spun another yarn: he instructed the children to pack a small bag and prepare for a picnic outing; the children did so and their spirits were lifted. Shortly after the group arrived at Treblinka, Korczak allayed the group's rising fears as they lined up to have their hair and clothes removed.

Later that day in one final bid to spare them from fear, he led the children in a song as they marched to their death. Janus Korzcak was not the only liar of the Holocaust, he is joined by thousands of others who lived and died through those terrible years.


I'm doubtful whether the Iranian President was referring to these or similar incidents in his Yom HaShoah offensive last week, but either way I thank him for jogging my mind.

The true damage and horror of Holocaust denial is not in its injustice to the past, but rather in its injustice to the future; put simply – it is the rape of civilization.

A brief glance towards the radical Islamic regimes across the Mid East and beyond, and at the state of the societies therein, reveals a world of intolerance, repression and wicked cruelty. What irony that the societies who deny the Holocaust most, are those with the most to learn from its unceasing call to human morality.

As we mark 61 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, with our own Persian Hitler not so far away, the importance of perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust only grows stronger.

AR

Coalition Conundrum

Following fluctuating election results and a media circus surrounding 101 underhand coalition plots, one week after the first exit polls were released, and the shape of the future coalition government looks as everyone expected it would: A Kadima led center-left block with, says Olmert, Labor as a "Senior partner."

One could be fooled into thinking that the speculation of the past week was merely a smoke screen to allow Kadima and Labor to iron out the details of an agreement, but don't be so sure. The decisions facing all of the party leaders, Olmert particularly are far from simple. The hard truth is that these recent elections have left a lot hanging in the air.

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, first bolted from the Likud, his new party promised to win the hearts and minds of a third of the nation. A drop from 44 seats to the princely sum of 29 at the almost-final count leaves the acting prime minister hoping to achieve twice the amount that Sharon was able to, with half the amount of support behind him.

If he is to be a fraction of the bulldozer that Sharon was, he will need at least 61 Knesset members in favor of a unilateral withdrawal from the majority of the West Bank - for that he knows only too well, he needs Amir Peretz and his 19 or 20 Labor party colleagues. This however is where the conundrum really begins. Amir Peretz is unlike any labor leader the country has known before, a hard line socialist and brave defender of the working class - Peretz suggests an economic platform that many fear could seriously destabilize the economy.

Mr Olmert could find himself stuck between a rock and a hard place; he needs Peretz to push through the unilateral withdrawal he promised Kadima voters, but the Labor man, wants control of the economy.

Benjamin Netanyahu's economic reforms and drawing back of the welfare state have enabled the country to offer attractive incentives to western firms to invest more in Israel. Although the country has never seen more soup kitchens, ironically the Tel Aviv stock exchange has never been healthier.

So, thinking away from a Labor-Kadima alliance, many point to the religious parties and Israel's right wing factions as possible coalition bed fellows but thoe options don’t provide for such plain sailing either. Israel's Ultra Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism will be easily pacified in the short term, with a key to the Ministry of the Interior and some increased funding for their religious institutions however no one is quite sure if they can be relied upon to place their combined 18 seats behind Olmert's Disengagement plan II.

It's true that UJT sold out on Gaza in July 2005, but like Shas, their party's support base leans to the right and many in both parties could find a second and much larger unilateral withdrawal impossible to stomach. Shas Leader Eli Yishai has already made his opposition to such a pull-out clear. And so with the religious parties decisively unpredictable, all that remains is looking further to the right. Although Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu would happily sit with Olmert in a coalition block, they would rejoice in toppling the government as and when the West Bank withdrawal plan is tabled in the Knesset; so that too is a dead end.As to be expected in Israeli politics there is always another opinion, and in this case it looks to be in the shape of some shrewd negotiations on Olmert's part to convince Mr Peretz to join the good ship Kadima, onwards and forth to a further disengagement, with the proviso that the larger than life labor leader becomes a silent "senior partner," and agrees not to meddle too much with the economy. Practically speaking that would mean placating the Labor party with the education ministry and other ministries less delicate than the treasury.

Square pegs and round holes don’t usually compliment each other, but rumors suggest Mr Peretz could even land himself the job of Defense Minister even though his stated aim is to slash the defense budget. This would set Olmert up nicely to form the center left government he needs, however it depends on Peretz selling out on his 'Robin Hood policy package' for the poor after what has been an almost one track election campaign.

Tuesday's announcement that Kadima and Labor will stand together, answers some of our questions, but with both men refusing to speculate on the division of ministries, and the stock market trembling in the meantime, there is still so much about Israel's 17th Knesset hanging in the air. AR