Vampire Killers
March 14, 2001
Folk stories about vampires provide readers with various
remedies to the calamity of a ghoulish attack. A fistful of
graveyard dirt is favored, garlic is beneficial, and the cross
is most efficient. But these remedies don't always work. In
Roman Polansky's hilarious horror comedy, The Fearless Vampire
Killers, the hero tries to scare off a Jewish vampire by a sign
of the cross. The Jew smiles at him with a kind understanding
smile, straight from Fiddler on the Roof, and bares his fangs.
The cross does not ward him off. Polansky's work comes to mind
as I follow the new wave of Holocaust controversies.
The "revisionist historians", who are considered by their
adversaries to be "Holocaust deniers", are currently meeting in
Beirut to compare their notes on Nazi genocide. The American
Jewish establishment, including the Zionist Organization of
America and the Anti-Defamation League, has demanded a ban on
the conference. The ZOA is not against revisionism as such. This
organization pioneered the art of denying history and published,
at the expense of American taxpayer, a booklet called "Deir
Yassin: History of a Lie".
Deir Yassin was a peaceful village the Jewish terrorist groups
Etzel and Lehi attacked on the 9th of April 1948, and massacred
its men, women and children. I do not want to repeat the gory
tale of sliced off ears, gutted bellies, raped women, torched
men, bodies dumped in stone quarries or the triumphal parade of
the murderers. Existentially, all massacres are similar, from
Babi Yar to Chain Gang to Deir Yassin.
ZOA revisionists have utilized all the methods of their
adversaries, the "deniers": they discount the eye-witness
accounts of the survivors, the Red Cross, the British police,
Jewish scouts and other Jewish observers, who were present at
the scene of massacre. They discount even Ben Gurion's apology,
since after all, the commanders of these gangs became in their
turn prime ministers of the Jewish state. For ZOA, only the
testimony of the murderers has any validity. That is, if the
murderers are Jews.
If the Jews are the victims, these same American Zionist
organizations spare no effort in challenging revisionism. This
morally dubious position was no doubt of great comfort to those
who gathered in Beirut. By their flawed logic, if the Israelis
are telling a tall tale about what happened in 1948, perhaps the
Jewish memories of the Holocaust are also flawed. It is
misplaced energy. Sure, they scored a few hits, and the tales of
soap manufactured from human fat or Wiesel’s fiery furnaces
were laid to rest. But these Revisionists also question the
actual number of Jewish victims. If only a thousand Jews or
Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis, it was a thousand too many.
It is hardly an important issue, as the very definition of
victim is based on interpretation.
A good example of "victim definition" was provided in last
weekend's Haaretz. When the Gulf war ended in 1991, there was
one reported Israeli victim of the war. Today, there are
officially one hundred Israelis who are recognized as victims of
the Gulf war, and their dependents receive a pension at Iraqi
expense. Some of the victims died of stress, some could not
remove their gas masks and suffocated. The Haaretz article
asserted that many more claims were declined by the Israeli
authorities. That is why Michael Elkins, the ex-BBC Jerusalem
correspondent and an Israeli citizen is correct in arguing that
the number of victims, whether there were six or three million
dead is not an issue.
The "revisionists" risked their lives and fortunes trying to
undermine what they call "the Myth of the Holocaust". One can
understand their interest. Nowadays, one may openly doubt the
Immaculate Conception or (maybe) challenge the founding myths of
Israel. Yet the cult of the Holocaust retains a unique,
court-enforced prohibition against any investigation that might
cast a doubt on its sacred dogma. Dogmas have a way of
attracting critical minds. Still, behind this red muleta, the
charging bull's horns meet thin air. The arguments on gas
chambers and soap production could be very interesting, but they
are quite irrelevant. Where then is the matador?
A courageous step was taken by Dr Norman Finkelstein in his
best-selling expose "The Holocaust Industry". There is, however,
an important distinction between Dr Finkelstein and the
"revisionist historians" gathered in Beirut. Dr Finkelstein, a
son of holocaust survivors, stayed away from the possibly
illegal statistical controversy and concentrated on the
ideological construct of the Holocaust cult.
A fat lot of good it did him. A Jewish organization called
"Lawyers without Borders" has already sued him in France. These
lawyers were at perfect peace, when the Israeli legal machine
pronounced a six months probationary sentence on a Jewish
murderer of a Gentile child. They did not move a finger when a
15-year-old girl Suad was placed in solitary confinement,
refused legal aid and subjected to mental torture. They are
visibly absent from Israeli military courts where a single
Jewish officer can mete out long imprisonment sentence to a
Gentile civilian based on undisclosed evidence. Apparently,
these lawyers are aware of certain borders.
Finkelstein set out to explore the secret of our discrete Jewish
charm, a charm that opens American hearts and the coffers of
Swiss bankers. His conclusion is that we do it by appealing to
European and American guilt feelings. "The Holocaust cult[1] has
proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its
deployment, one of the world's most formidable military powers,
with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a
victim state, and the most successful ethnic group in the US has
acquired victim status". Finkelstein carries out a brilliant
analysis of the Holocaust cult, and comes to a startling
discovery: it is but a shabby construct of a few clichés
stitched together by the sorrowful voice of Elie Wiesel in a
limo.
Finkelstein is not aware of the magnitude of his discovery, as
he still believes that the Holocaust cult is a great concept,
second only to the invention of the wheel. It solved the eternal
problem of the rich and influential, warding off the envy and
hate of the poor and exploited. It allowed Mark Rich and other
swindlers to cheat and steal, it allowed the Israeli army to
murder children and starve women with impunity. His opinion is
shared by many Israelis. Ari Shavit, a well-known Haaretz
writer, expressed it best in 1996, when the Israeli Army killed
over a hundred civilian refugees in Kana, Lebanon: "We may
murder with impunity, because the Holocaust museum is on our
side". Boaz Evron, Tom Segev and other Israeli writers have
articulated the same notion.
One can sum up the thesis of Dr Finkelstein as follows. The Jews
succeeded to square the circle, and solved the problem that
befuddled aristocracy and the run of the mill millionaires.
Namely, they disarmed their opponents by appealing to their
compassion and guilt feeling.
I admire Dr Finkelstein for his continued belief in the good
heart of his fellow Man. I trust he also believes in fairies. In
my own estimate, compassion and guilt feelings can maybe get you
a free bowl of soup. Not uncounted billions of dollars. Dr
Finkelstein is not blind. He noticed that the Gypsies, another
victim of the Nazis, received next to nothing from a
"compassionate" Germany. The capacity of Americans to feel
collective guilt towards their Vietnamese victims (5 million
killed, one million widows, Coventry-style destruction laced
with Agent Orange) was recently expressed by Defense Secretary
William Cohen: "There is no place for apology (let alone
compensation). A war is a war". Despite having all the facts at
his disposal, Dr Finkelstein grasps his cross and tries to
frighten the vampire away.
What is the source of power that fuels the Holocaust Industry?
This is no idle or theoretical question. The making of yet
another Palestinian tragedy is now in high gear, with the slow
strangulation of its cities. Every day, a tree is uprooted, a
house is demolished, a child is murdered. In Jerusalem, the Jews
celebrated Purim by a pogrom of Gentiles, and it made page six
in the local papers. In Hebron, the Kahane boys celebrated Purim
at the tomb of the mass murderer Goldstein. This is no time to
pussyfoot.
In The Sirens, Bloom expresses the feelings of his creator James
Joyce towards the bloody concept of Irish liberation by farting
at the epitaph of an Irish freedom fighter. My grandparents, my
aunts and uncles died in the WWII. But I swear by their memory,
if I thought that guilt feelings over the Holocaust cult caused
the death of a single Palestinian child, I would turn the
Holocaust memorial into a public urinaire.
The shabbiness of the Holocaust cult and the ease of its
victories in sucking billions is solid proof of the real power
behind this industry. This power is obscure, unseen, ineffable,
but quite real. It is not a power derived from the Holocaust,
but rather, the Holocaust cult is a display of raw muscle by
those who wield real power. That is why all efforts of the
revisionists are doomed. The people, who promote the cult, could
promote anything, as they dominate all public discourse. The
Holocaust cult is just a small manifestation of their abilities.
This power would just smile in the face of Dr Finkelstein's
revelations.
Note:
1. Dr Finkelstein distinguishes between "holocaust", the
historical event, and the Holocaust, the ideological construct.
I took the liberty to rename it "the Holocaust cult" in the
interests of lucidity.
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