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. 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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