 |
Petra Marquardt-Bigman is a German/Israel citizen with a Ph.D. in contemporary history with a focus on European public opinion relating to the Middle East, Islamic Terrorism, the US and Israel.
|
|
|
|
By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
December 15, 2006
 Bookmark to del.icio.us
Once again, Iran's president has managed to attract worldwide media attention. This time he is in the headlines as a hobby historian sponsoring a "scholarly debate" to "examine the justification for Israel's creation."
The media worldwide have generally dismissed Ahmadinejad's "scholarly ambitions and focused on condemning the Iranian conference as a despicable attempt to deny the Holocaust. Denying, doubting or diminishing the Holocaust is regarded by people around the world as offensive on several levels: First and foremost, it implies a denial of the horrific suffering of the Holocaust's victims; secondly, it implies a failure to acknowledge the frightening depth of mankind's capacity for evil; and thirdly, it implies a refusal to learn the "lessons" of the Holocaust, which include a firm commitment to the universally applicable pledge of "Never Again".
Ahmadinejad's own statements leave little doubt that he would qualify in all three respects as a Holocaust denier. But there can be equally little doubt that his views are rather popular in the Middle East. The passionate condemnations of the current conference in Iran cannot really make up for the usual reluctance of the media to address the fact that Holocaust denial has become an integral part of the Arab and Islamic world's culture.
But it is indeed a topic that is difficult to discuss. To put it bluntly: In the Middle East, the Holocaust is denied because it did not achieve what it was meant to achieve -- the "final solution" of the "Jewish problem". And in today's Middle East, as in the past's Nazi Germany, the "Jewish problem" is not so much that Jews exist, but that Jews exist where they are deemed to have no right to exist. What makes the topic of Holocaust denial in the Middle East all the more difficult to discuss is the fact that questioning if Jews have a right to exist in Israel has become legitimate, even fashionable, far beyond the Middle East.
Progressive liberal intellectuals in the West will largely agree with Ahmadinejad's view that, if it was not for the Holocaust, the establishment of the state of Israel would never have gained international legitimacy. Similarly, many liberals would agree with the argument that "compensating" the Jews for the Holocaust by allowing them to establish a state on what are predominantly Arab/Muslim lands constituted a historic injustice [discounting the claim that the Jews have returned to the historical homeland from which they were expelled by the Romans-ed]. Few liberals would go as far as Ahmadinejad and suggest that therefore Israel should be "wiped off the map", but there are already some who even agree with that, and they are not just found on the lunatic fringes, but in respectable academic positions, serving, for example, as Middle East peace experts in places such as London's Chatham House.
Moreover, really progressive intellectuals will also see a "silver lining" in Iran's nuclear ambitions. Indeed, one of the leading representatives of this "school" of thought has actually suggested to "Give Iranian Nukes a Chance", arguing that "countries like Iran should possess nuclear arms to constrain the global hegemony of the United States". That kind of argument may sound lunatic to Israeli ears; to European ears, it sounds like avant-garde intellectual reasoning.
And it looks more and more like this kind of "avant-garde" reasoning is prevailing, because the international community is apparently unable to muster the political will to prevent Iran from pursuing its nuclear program. While Iran's nuclear ambitions may not be primarily motivated by a desire to provide the "final solution" for the "Jewish problem", Iran's objective of attaining the status of a regional superpower requires a strategy to overcome the antagonism between Sunnis and Shiites. And as this summer's war with Hezbollah demonstrated, nothing will do the trick quite as spectacularly as a good beating of Israel.
Israel can therefore expect more of the same; for the lulls in between provocations, it will do just fine for Ahmadinejad's purposes to sponsor cartoon contests on the Holocaust or "scholarly debates" to "examine the justification for Israel's creation" -- all of this demonstrates his leadership in the search for a "final solution" of the "Jewish problem". Denouncing Ahmadinejad's efforts is important, but it will also have a hollow ring if echoing his arguments can pass as progressive and liberal thinking in the West.
The Holocaust has often been manipulated for political purposes, and Israel is not blameless in this respect. But it is time to recognize that it is just another political manipulation of the Holocaust to claim that the Palestinian "Naqba" constituted a trauma no less severe. It is also time to recognize that Israel cannot be reduced to the state of the Holocaust survivors that forfeits its legitimacy if it does not willingly play the role of the victim. And it is time to recognize that it is hypocrisy if those who plead so skillfully for the sympathies of a guilty Europe by presenting themselves as victims of the victims of the Holocaust nurture fantasies of a "final solution".
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
